Reframing the Problem

It’s O’dark Thirty, and I find myself in a familiar place. I try to shake the morning daze of a too-early wakeup and set off into the woods with my headlamp. I’ve had many great adventures that began and ended on this trail, in the dark, so it felt all too familiar.

But this time, I’m not alone. This is, after all, the Colchuck Lake Trail, gateway to the famous Enchantments. The parking lot was already full when I started, well before dawn. Back when I started visiting the Enchantments in 2015, headlamp starts were only for the hardcore alpinists. But because of the near impossibility of getting an overnight permit, more and more people are choosing to day hike the Enchantments.

As I climb up the infamous Aasgard Pass, I struggle to stay on the unmaintained trail at times. Looking around, there are people everywhere, scrambling around on boulders, kicking rocks down on each other. After one close call with a whizzing rock, I decide it is prudent to hike with my helmet on. It made me wonder: after years of growing crowds, how does the Aasgard Pass trail still suck this much?

A common trope echoes in my head – “Suck it up, we’re all part of the problem…” Or are we? What actually is the problem? And ultimately, what is the solution?

The Descent into Scarcity

In Washington, we have some of the most abundant mountains in the USA, but most scarce access. Here are a few manifestations of scarcity:

• The likelihood of winning a Core Zone permit in the Enchantment lottery is around 1%, making it one of the most competitive permit lotteries in the country. That’s less likely than getting into Harvard.
• For the winter 2024-25 season, Summit at Snoqualmie charged $55 per day for parking, the highest in the nation – higher than Aspen, Vail, or Alta.
• In 2024, Mt. Rainier National Park instituted timed entry reservations for the popular destinations of Paradise and Sunrise.

These changes have an obvious culprit: increased demand. Washington state’s population grew 15% between 2010 and 2022, and outdoor recreation has increased approximately 30% between 2015 and 2020. In niche sports, the growth may be even stronger. The WA state RCO survey shows 12x growth in backcountry skiing between 2017 and 2022.

But an underappreciated component of the scarcity equation is decreased supply. While few notable access improvements have occurred in the recent decades, here are just a few of the many important access points lost or reduced:

• The Carbon River Bridge was recently closed until further notice. This cuts off access to Mowich Lake and other hikes on the NW side of Mt. Rainier. This was the last alpine access to Mt. Rainier National Park that was not limited by the timed entry reservation. 
• The westside road in Mt. Rainier National Park closed to automobiles in 1993, and the park has no intentions of reopening it.
• The Whitechuck River Road washed out in 2003 and has never been repaired. Historically, this road offered the shortest and easiest access to Glacier Peak.
• Over the last few years, Mt. Rainier National Park has reduced winter access to Paradise to generally 3-4 days per week, instead of 7 days per week, like in the past. It frequently opens late, even during good weather.
• The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan directs projects to have an overall net reduction in forest roads or at least neutral impact. This means our road network must decrease over time. 
• Many of the historical backcountry skiing spots near Snoqualmie Pass were logged decades ago and have grown back in a dense and unnatural way. They are no longer viable skiing options.

Going back beyond my lifetime, there are even more shocking changes to access in the Cascades. Consider that, in the late 1800s, there were over 1000 residents in Monte Cristo, which is now a ghost town that has been reclaimed by the forest. Even as recent as 2000, there was still vehicle access to the townsite.

Why have we lost so much access? The simple answer is funding. Recreation has been soaring, but USFS and NPS budgets have been flat or down for multiple decades now. This blog has some sobering statistics about funding and maintenance. Estimates are that the Forest Service only has enough budget to adequately maintain 7-15% of its roads. While groups like the Washington Trails Association and Mountaineers are now starting to advocate for roads, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

I often hear people complain about how “the outdoors are more crowded than ever”. In reality, I would amend that phrase to: “the outdoors where most people recreate are more crowded than ever”. It’s selection bias. Outside of a few concentrated areas, the Cascades are “re-wilding” very rapidly. But there are very few people who experience this perspective, for better or worse. Don’t believe me? Try bushwhacking up to Azure Lake in the North Cascades, where there used to be a legit trail. The story repeats itself all over the Cascades. The Cascades are a graveyard of abandoned trails and lost roads.

Scarcity is a dangerous path to head down. I’ve written in the past about why we must actively choose abundance, but first I’m going to return to the fundamentals of why recreation and access are important.

Why Recreation is Good

Okay, here is where I am going to make a firm stand. This is an opinion blog, and it is my opinion that responsible recreation, and thus abundant access to recreation, is inherently a good thing.

Outdoor recreation has many benefits:

• Outdoor recreation is beneficial to both mental and physical health.
• Access to public lands makes people care for public lands.
  • If you want people to fight the proposed public lands sell-off, then you need them to be public lands lovers, advocates, stewards, and volunteers.
• Outdoor recreation is a large and growing part of our economy.
  • Outdoor recreation composes approximately 3.2% of Washington’s GDP. 
  • The economic benefits are concentrated in rural areas, which have disproportionately suffered since the decline of logging in the 1990s.
• Recreation is an issue that transcends political partisanship.
• It’s fun!
  • If you’re reading this, recreation is probably a really meaningful part of your life.

In contrast, scarce access to outdoor recreation has many drawbacks:

• Scarcity of access disadvantages people with fewer resources (more on that later).
• Scarcity creates divisive, hostile communities.
• Scarcity encourages unsafe decision making.
  • Permit seasons encourage people to go outside of the permit season, when conditions are more dangerous.
  • Powder scarcity in backcountry skiing is a heuristic trap that can lead to increased avalanche risk.

While most people would probably agree that recreation is good, many also simultaneously believe that people wanting to access the outdoors is bad. On online forums, people will remind each other that “we’re all part of the problem”. In my experiences interacting with land managers and conservation groups, I’ve felt that people are painted as the source of the overcrowding problem, in the same way that new residents are villainized for high housing prices. In a fucked-up way, it is almost taboo to suggest the idea of expanding (can’t use the “E”-word!) improving access. In so many conservations I’ve had, the implicit (or even explicit) subtext is that people are the problem.

But what if we reframed our mindset to focus on supply, rather than demand? Fundamentally, I believe that every person has an equal right to our public lands in America, whether they have been recreating for 50 years or are brand new. There’s nothing inherently problematic about wanting to take your kids sledding at Snoqualmie Pass or witness the beauty of Mt. Rainier up close. The problem is that our supply of access has shrunk, while demand has grown.

Why Abundant Access is Required for Equitable Access

As the son of a Cambodian refugee, it is also my opinion that equitable access to the outdoors is important. I think that most people reading this would agree.

While there are plenty of groups working on what I will call “soft access” – education, mentorship, gear opportunities, etc. – to bring more diverse people to the outdoors, this is all dependent on “hard access” – roads, transportation, etc. (in a way that parallels the efforts to implement subsidized affordable housing without addressing housing affordability at large). While soft access is important for creating inclusive communities, I think people largely forget that hard access is the foundation of equitable access. Contrary to how it may seem, the outdoors doesn’t happen on Instagram.

Consider the timed entry reservation system at Mt. Rainier, a self-imposed scarcity. By restricting the entrants between 7am and 3pm, and not providing any sort of shuttle, they are making it much more difficult for normal visitors to access the park. People with weekday flexibility will avoid weekends. People without kids might just get up early and enter before 7 AM. People with E-bikes might just bike in from a more distant parking lot. And people with intimate local knowledge might use specific access points just outside the park that are essentially loopholes.

Fundamentally, scarcity favors those with resources to navigate the barriers to access: time, money, and knowledge. Who doesn’t have those resources? Generally more working class, diverse people.

Furthermore, popular spots tend to be the most racially diverse. When I hiked to Franklin Falls this winter, minorities were the majority. Restricting access to our most popular destinations, like Mt. Rainier National Park, will disproportionately displace minorities.

As winter access to Snoqualmie Pass becomes more scarce, equitable access has suffered. The pricing is a large barrier to lower income visitors. Furthermore, the complexity of pass requirements and parking legality is incredibly confusing and burdensome to the casual recreator. On the other end, I’ve heard of frustrated skiers going out and buying a $50k truck and $20k snowmobile, spending their way out of scarce access, all the while massively expanding our environmental footprint and emitting 1000x the carbon monoxide of a regular gas vehicle (note: I have used snowmobiles on occasion, just stating the reality).

If you believe in equitable access, then you must support abundant access. Values are displayed through our choices, not our words. And sadly, in Washington state, we are failing our values by choosing scarcity.

What Does Abundant Access Look Like?

Before you accuse me of wanting to pave over the wilderness, I want to discuss the manifestation of abundant access.

Fundamentally, abundance is about increasing supply.

There are two general approaches to increasing the supply of access:

1. Disperse people over more access points.
2. Concentrate access, but build the necessary recreation infrastructure to support higher density.

If you support abundant and equitable access, then you must support one of these two options (or a combination of both).

Abundant dispersed recreation means increasing awareness of underutilized recreation sites, increasing the capacity at less popular areas, restoring closed areas, and potentially opening up new locations. In reality, building new roads into the mountains is likely politically untenable and economically challenging, considering our inability to maintain our existing road network. Educating people about underutilized areas is a potential, but fundamentally changing people’s behavior is not easy. I think we should do everything that we can to preserve the access that we have, so supply does not become even more scarce, but significant additional capacity probably will not come through new dispersed recreation. 

Abundant concentrated recreation means increasing the recreational capacity/density of the most popular areas. This requires both developing the means to deliver more people to the location (parking, transit) and improving the recreational infrastructure (better trails, signs, bathrooms) so that more visitors does not significantly degrade the user experience and environment. Generally, this approach costs less per person, incurs less environmental impact per person, and does not require changing people’s minds where to go. The marginal cost and environmental impact actually decreases with denser recreation. This is synonymous with “building up” rather than “building out” in housing. I believe that investing in concentrated abundant access is the most viable way to increase supply of recreation.

I would like to highlight a few great examples of abundant concentrated access:

• The Forest Service built the new Franklin Falls parking lot, funded by the Great American Outdoors Act (signed by Trump in 2020) to expand parking capacity at one of the most popular local outdoor spots.
  • In addition, they designed the parking lot to allow for a bus turnaround, although transit has not yet been implemented.
• At Lake Louise in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, they have nearly completely banned private vehicles, instead regulating traffic with a shuttle.
  • While supply is somewhat limited by shuttle spots, they are still delivering more visitors than private cars could.
  • Additionally, the trails are built up to handle large volumes of hikers while minimizing environmental impact.
  • High parking charges for limited private vehicles helps fund the shuttle system.
• The Granite Backcountry Alliance has created sanctioned backcountry glades that allow a greater density of backcountry skiers to have a positive experience in a small parcel of land.
  • These glades also bring economic benefit to local communities.
  • A similar effort at Snoqualmie Pass to thin the dense, unnatural forests could bring back historically accessible backcountry skiing, improve forest health, and reduce wildfire danger.
• Duthie Hill Mountain Bike Park packs as many trails as possible into a small parcel of land.
• Trailhead Direct provides access to popular hiking spots close to Seattle.

These examples show that abundant access does not have to inherently be at odds with conservation. In fact, they can work together, by reducing spillover effects to other areas.

Maintaining Dispersed Access + Increasing Concentrated Access = Abundant Recreation

While it is tempting to want to fix the problem of access by outlawing parking fees and other subsidies, this will only result in increasing scarcity (see cost disease socialism). $55 daily parking is not the problem itself, but rather a symptom of the problem: inadequate supply.

Conservation vs Preservation

Up until this point, I’ve used the generic term “conservation” to describe a viewpoint that is fundamentally anti-people and anti-recreation. In reality, there is more nuance.

Conservation seeks proper and sustainable use of nature, while preservation seeks to protect nature from use (ironically, this is the definition per the National Park Service). This is a huge difference. Many traditional “conservation” groups (e.g. North Cascades Conservation Council) are actually preservation groups, seeking to prevent humans from accessing nature.

A Unified Theory of Access and Conservation

We often think of access and conservation as two separate issues. The reality is that they are inevitably intersectional. This Venn Diagram captures the overlap between access and preservation: conservation. In our current state, I believe we are making decisions that primarily represent the right side. I want us to move more to the center. Sustainable access is required for effective conservation.

I’m going to go a bit further: if you consider yourself pro-conservation, but are not actively supporting abundant access, then you are not only anti-equitable access, but also anti-environment on a macro scale. I will explain further.

If you support preservation, which typically involves limiting supply of access, then you are creating scarcity. As explained earlier, scarcity disadvantages those with fewer resources. Additionally, scarcity in one place will displace demand to nearby places, creating spillover effects. On a macro scale, this will actually result in more impact. It is “missing the forest for the trees”.

“Overcrowding” is often described as a problem in itself. Illegal parking, environmental damage, and safety issues are all real problems. But I would argue that “overcrowding” is often used to describe an aesthetic that presupposes values of solitude and quiet that are not universally shared – some people enjoy the social aspect of recreation. We should try to address the real problems that crowds lead to, but overcrowding itself could actually be reframed as an opportunity to promote concentrated access, provide for abundant recreation, and decrease marginal environmental impact.

Mt. Rainier National Park is a prime example of this misguided stance. The timed entry reservations, without any shuttle (despite many local groups advocating for one), have a number of problems:

• Mt. Rainier is the crown jewel of Washington’s mountains, and limiting access makes it more challenging for visitors and residents to appreciate it.
• The trails at Paradise and Sunrise are wide, well-built, and often paved, much more capable of handling large volumes of hikers than more primitive trails just outside the park.
• The permits could push hikers to expand their impacts to areas outside the park, which lack the infrastructure and staffing to manage high visitation.

On paper, Mt. Rainier National Park may have achieved its pro-preservation goal of reducing visitation and impact on their land specifically. But on a regional scale, its effects are likely counter to preservation goals. I would actually argue that we should deliver far more visitors to Mt. Rainier, via shuttles, because of its comparatively strong infrastructure and high popularity. We should make it our goal that anyone wanting to visit our most iconic mountain should be able to, on any day.

Aside: Housing

There are so many parallels between access and housing in Washington. In 1990, Washington State passed the Growth Management Act, which limited urban growth beyond certain boundaries to conserve natural lands. While we have done a great job of preventing building out, we have not done a good job building densely, resulting in some of the most unaffordable housing in the nation. Meanwhile, housing affordability is the biggest cause of homelessness, prevents class mobility, and increases intergenerational wealth gaps. Density has been blocked by excessive procedures and misguided activists who prioritize their local environment over The Environment.

Counter Arguments

“Abundant access will just create induced demand.”

While providing more access could result in induced demand in that particular location, it should relieve demand in aggregate. In a similar sense, building market rate housing is proven to improve housing affordability at large. And even if there is some induced demand, if you believe recreation is good, and that diverse recreators are good, then you will welcome the increased demand!

“Impact has reached unsustainable levels. We’re loving our public lands to death.”

As I’ve explained, conservation and abundant access can actually work together. If you believe the environmental impact of recreation has reached an unsustainable level, then you should support recreational density, concentrating and limiting impact, instead of dispersing it. The demand will not just magically disappear.

But also, as I explained earlier, very specific spots have seen huge increases in impact. Many other locations have seen a decrease in impact. It is not universal. Complete valleys (e.g. Whitechuck) have been essentially abandoned by humans with lost access. You just don’t see it, because few people go there.

I would also question claims that impact is “unsustainable” in certain situations. There are, of course, more complex wildlife considerations, but I find that the most common objection to increased visitation is impact on the land (i.e. trampling meadows, etc) because it is highly visible. Let us consider Mount Rainier National Park, which officially has 276 miles of trails. If we assume each trail is 2 ft wide, that is 67 acres of land covered in trails. In contrast, the entire area of the park is over 236,000 acres! Trails cover less than 0.03% of the entire park. If we doubled the width of the trails (to increase capacity), we would lose… another 0.03% of natural land coverage. That hardly feels “unsustainable” in an objective sense, but it certainly could be an aesthetic eyesore, which I believe is actually what bothers people more.

Instead of a knee-jerk reaction to limit access when recreation has reached “unsustainable” levels, I would advocated for asking the questions: in what way is it unsustainable? Is there anything we can do to make it more sustainable?

“Nature is more important than recreation.”

This is more a value statement than an argument. But as I’ve said before, you can value both nature and recreation!

“New recreators don’t respect Leave No Trace principles.”

I do admit that it seems like super popular areas have a greater amount of hikers who leave trash all over the place (please take your trash home with you instead of dumping it inside the outhouses!). I think that other advocacy groups are doing a great job educating new hikers about LNT principles, and it is important. I know people and organizations who pack out these piles of trash, and huge thanks to them.

“More access just means more work for Search and Rescue (SAR).”

Concentrated recreation – creating safe, adequate opportunities for newer recreators in popular places, should help reduce SAR. When people are forced to disperse and go into unfamiliar terrain, they are more likely to get into trouble. Regardless, we need to support and fund SAR as a part of abundant access.

“Social media hotspots make planning recreation capacity difficult for land managers.”

This is true. Places that have sustained popularity like Paradise or Snoqualmie Pass are easier to plan around and invest in. But when random obscure larch or wildflower hikes go viral on social media, there is no ability to have a planned approach. Additionally, it would not be a good usage of money to invest in a spot that is only popular a few weeks per year. Thus, I do think that influencers (like me) should be thoughtful about which areas they promote, and generally try to avoid creating random hotspots.

“It wouldn’t work if all of Seattle wanted to go to Mt. Rainier on any given day.”

Of course it would not. I’m not arguing to increase demand, just to have adequate supply to meet the existing demand. I’m not advocating for trying to manipulate demand. Although generally I support bringing more people to Paradise, there could be a point where the environmental impacts are too high and it is better to disperse people, even on a macro scale. But I really doubt we are at that point yet.

“There are some situations where permits / limits are needed.”

I don’t disagree with that. However, I think we should only add restrictions when all other possibilities to increase the capacity (through shuttles, better trails, etc) of that location have been exhausted. And we need to be realistic that demand will be displaced, so we should accompany those changes with abundant and sustainable access in nearby locations. 

“This is hypocritical because you do so much dispersed recreation.”

It is true that I love dispersed recreation. But over the last few years, I have come to realize that abundant concentrated recreation is much more sustainable. Additionally, popular areas are… popular. It’s where the demand already is. I’m not the average recreator. I’m not telling people they can only go to a few concentrated areas… people just want to go to those popular spots already. That’s why I’m advocating for increasing supply for those popular areas, where possible. I don’t think the fact that I have different personal preferences invalidates the argument as a whole.

“It’s actually better for the environment to spread people out and disperse recreation.”

Personally, I’m a huge fan of dispersed recreation, and would love to see more. But that’s not the vibe I have gotten from “conservation” groups. Generally, I feel like expanding concentrated recreation is more likely than expanding dispersed recreation. Just like we shouldn’t knock down single family homes on large lots without replacing them, I’m not advocating for reducing dispersed recreation. That would only restrict supply further.

“We can’t possibly make improvements when land managers are not sufficiently funded”

Ah, this is a nuanced one. Land managers are getting absolutely gutted right now, and the problems started decades ago. Improving the capacity (trails, bathrooms, signs) of popular locations typically involves money. Money that land managers increasingly don’t have. If you aren’t already, please be an advocate for funding land managers and recreation (groups like Outdoor Alliance are great at coordinating on a national scale).

However, conversations with land managers have revealed to me that money is not always the blocker. For example, when we probed Mt. Rainier about offering a shuttle, the superintendent said that their reason for not considering a shuttle was not the monetary expense, but rather that they simply believed that their trails were at capacity. If they had come out and said they supported a shuttle, but could not pay for it with user fees, but wanted to brainstorm solutions with partners, then I would be much more sympathetic. When we asked if there was anything non profit groups could do to support increased access to the park, the superintendent simply shook his head. This risk-averse “No-culture” is difficult to work with, even with a good budget.

Many of the great examples of abundant access, such as the sanctioned glades of the Granite Backcountry Alliance, are conducted by volunteers, and require minimal funding. The Sno-Park program is a completely self funded model that provides plowing, grooming, education, and sanitation, all from user fees. As revenue of the Sno-Park program has grown with increased participation, they have been able to create an “abundance of grooming”, grooming the trails more days per week. The success of the Sno-Park program is also due to a willingness to work with private clubs and empower volunteers, something I have advocated for in the past. We need both greater government capacity for recreation and increased public-private partnership. The challenge is not just financial, but also cultural. It’s a “Yes-and” situation.

This blog post outlines a ton of thoughtful ways to increase Forest Service revenue. One of the most interesting stories is that of the South Fork Stillaguamish Vegetation Management Project, which thinned dense, unhealthy, and fire prone forests on the southern part of the Mountain Loop Highway. The commercial thinning paid for non-commercial thinning and road repair (the popular Pilchuck road was repaired during this process, without taxpayer money), creating a triple bottom line of healthy forests, rural jobs, and improved roads. Unsurprisingly, the North Cascades Conservation Council sued to prevent the project, but fortunately they were unsuccessful. This is yet another classic example of environmental review being weaponized by conservation groups, as occurs frequently, preventing us from building clean energy and affordable housing.

“We’re not choosing scarcity, it’s just happening as a result of population growth.”

I don’t believe our land managers are acting out of malice. The average USFS or NPS employee cares a ton about access to public lands, but they are burdened by insufficient funding and problematic leadership. Scarcity is the default. Doing nothing is an easy way for leadership to avoid blame. But choosing to let supply suffer is a choice, whether we like it or not. Doing nothing is a choice.

The Case for Abundance

At the same time that an abundance movement is sweeping the nation, focusing on important issues like housing and innovation, I think recreation is an interesting analogy. In the last 10 years, I have experienced a ton of change in our mountains, always asking “why”. Through my shadow interactions with land managers, groups, and elected officials, I have developed a growing sense of unease that access is getting deprioritized, despite the fact that we all depend on it. It’s a culture dominated by fear of upsetting a vocal minority, where land managers walk on eggshells placed by special interest groups, and the general majority – the parents that just want to take their kids to sled at Snoqualmie Pass – remains mostly voiceless.

Abundant access does not mean paving over the wilderness. It means doubling down on popular recreation sites, funding our land managers, investing in mass transit, building out recreation infrastructure, and generally coming to common sense solutions. The other option – scarcity – leads us down a path that is inequitable and unwelcoming. The other Washington has captured the seductive politics of scarcity. Here in Washington state, what will we choose?

My point is not to offer specific solutions. Before we get to solutions, we must change the culture. We must choose abundance. Abundance is not the easy choice, but I believe it is the right choice. Abundant access will require collaboration, compromise, funding, and, most of all, will of the people. Sure, some solutions will cost a lot of money, and might not be viable given our budget problems. But right now, it often feels like we’re not even trying. Instead of complaining about too many people, I want the conversation to be about what we have to do to make abundant access possible.

Imagine a future where people of all income levels and backgrounds can easily visit our mountains and appreciate nature. Imagine a world where you do not have to worry about what time that one parking lot will fill up. Imagine a community where new entrants are welcomed, not scolded. This is abundance.

To greater heights, to unforgettable sights.

The only way is up.