STATE EYES MANDATORY RESERVATION, PERMIT PLAN FOR HIKERS, CAMPERS OVERCROWDING NEW YORK'S HIGHEST MOUNTAINS

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June 30, 2024

The crown jewel of the state's constitutionally-protected Forest Preserve should be stripped of its wilderness protection and filled with cops and free parking lots.

That's what a few New Yorkers told the state agency responsible for managing the High Peaks wilderness during a public hearing on a plan to relieve overcrowding in the extraordinarily beautiful and specially protected area last Thursday night. 

"If a person wants to see real untouched wilderness he can go somewhere else," Yuri Makedonov, who claimed to be a regular hiker, said during the three-hour long virtual hearing. 

The Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, is responsible for protecting the 275,460-acre High Peaks wilderness, located in the Adirondack mountains outside Lake Placid. Like Alaska is to America, the high peaks are to New York. 

To alleviate overcrowding on high peak trails, DEC is considering imposing a mandatory reservation and permit regime. It's like the hikers' version of congestion pricing—the controversial traffic management tool scheduled to take effect in New York City on June 30 but indefinitely "paused" by Gov. Kathy Hochul on June 5. 

Last Thursday's hearing was facilitated by private consultants from a group called Otak and attended by DEC officials. DEC spent $600,000 to hire Otak to collect data and public opinion upon which to base any recommended changes to the way DEC regulates access to the high peaks and Kaaterskill Falls in the Catskills.

Otak engineered a permit system for Acadia National Park in Maine that requires people who want to hike to the top of Cadillac mountain to see the sunrise to telephone a computer system at an exact time a certain number of days before their planned hike and pay $6.

Instead of supporting the DEC's "congestion hiking" plan, most speakers at the three-hour long virtual hearing criticized it.

Bill Schneider called it a "fallacy" to expect "solitude" in the high peaks. Schneider said "improving the parking" should be a priority instead.

Eric Avery, another speaker, agreed DEC should prioritize parking over wilderness preservation: "There's always been a lack of parking." 

Susan Hayman, one of the meeting's facilitators, said she heard from other members of the public more police would be good.

“More rangers, more rangers, more rangers,” Hayman said, referring to the armed Forest Rangers who patrol the preserve and rescue lost or injured hikers.

People from all-over flooded the high peaks during the Wuhan virus pandemic. Trails, parking lots and primitive forest pit-toilets overflowed with people, cars and poop. Locals were overwhelmed by the "invasion."

At the same time, Forest Rangers were re-deployed to vaccination sites for security. Regular trail maintenance was also deferred. 

The result was that, during a period in time when more people than ever were hiking in the Forest Preserve, it was also patrolled and maintained by the fewest Rangers.

The 2020-21 crisis in the backcountry provided the impetus for the DEC to address long-simmering concerns raised by its own workers, conservation groups and everyday hikers about the growing numbers of people hiking and camping in the high peaks—independent of the pandemic surge.

It is not unusual for scores of people to crowd high peak summits on sunny weekends in summer. New York's highest mountain, Mt. Marcy, can be topped with hundreds of hikers. One study said the congestion was comparable to a city sidewalk: "urban walk-way-level crowding."

Reservation and permit requirements for hikers and campers are being put in place all across America. One of the oldest comparable systems started at Baxter State Park in Maine in 1970. Baxter includes Maine's highest mountain, Katahdin.

Mostly hikers from cities with conventional jobs and sometimes children, who sometimes plan their lives meticulously, tend to like permit systems. Hikers who lead unconventional lives and don't like being forced to pre-plan anything tend to hate them.

Currently, a DEC-sponsored permit program is being piloted at the privately-owned Adirondack Mountain Reserve, which controls access to mountains on the eastern edge of the publicly-owned high peaks wilderness area. The "pilot" program started in 2021 and is entering its fourth year.

Many speakers roundly criticized the pilot program because people made thousands of reservations but never showed up. The result was that hikers blocked from making a reservation were denied access even though parking lots were far from full.

One of the environmental groups that supports regulating access to the high peaks with some kind of reservation and permit system is Adirondack Wild.

“We are an enthusiastic supporter of this parking reservation system, and will encourage its continued evaluation and possible expansion,” managing director David Gibson told The Free Lance. “There were several misstatements during the online public meeting.”

Citing the need “to reduce Wilderness congestion, restore wilder conditions, and increase both hiker education and public safety” Gibson added his group has “been calling for a pilot reservation system for a number of years.”

Both Otak and DEC did not respond to an invitation to comment.

If DEC does decide something has to be done to mitigate hiker congestion in the high peaks, whatever it does has to be consistent with the Forever Wild Clause. 

New York's Forest Preserve was created by the state legislature in 1885. Lawmakers subsequently approved commercial logging on Forest Preserve lands. Enraged voters responded by putting it out of the reach of corrupt politicians with a special amendment to the state constitution in 1894. The amendment, called the Forever Wild Clause, requires the Forest Preserve "shall be forever kept as wild forest lands." 

Since its enactment, the Clause has been strictly interpreted by New York's highest court to guarantee the maximum protection possible. For example, in 2021 the Court of Appeals found DEC violated the Forever Wild Clause by building extra-wide snowmobile trails on Forest Preserve land. 

While the focus of that and other fights over the preserve has been counting the number of trees cut down, the Clause's plain language requires DEC maintain the preserve's "wild" character as a whole. Arguably that includes preventing overcrowding.

Until 2015 when DEC started a pilot permit program at one extraordinarily small, very environmentally sensitive and especially over-run roadside swimming hole in the Catskills (on a creek feeding a New York City reservoir widely-popularized by social media), New York had never restricted or required permits for hiking in the Forest Preserve. 

In the high peaks, local stakeholders issued a Jan. 2021 report calling for a mandatory permit system "if data analysis" supported it. One possibility the report pointed to was a centralized parking permit system instead of a mandatory hiking and camping permit system. The plan envisioned a park-and-ride for hikers from which they'd be bussed to high peak trailheads. 

During Thursday's hearing, one facilitator said the next step would happen sometime in "the fall" when a "hefty" draft report would be published for public review. Any suggested changes would be detailed in the draft report. Members of the public would be able to comment on the draft and propose their own changes at that time.

"We will provide responses to these comments," facilitator Abbie Larkin said, "or revise the report to produce the final based on that input."

DEC has the final say over any changes. The project's progress can be tracked on its website, www.highpeaksvum.com.

In the meantime, this may be the last summer New York's highest mountains can be hiked truly "wild" and free of bureaucracy.

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