Why should we open the parks?

I do have the option of a couple wilderness areas in WV that I know really well. Go in and head off trail and I'd have some safe space for sure.

Yesterday I drove up to a trailhead of the AT near me and the parking lot was beyond packed; cars were parked down the road for almost a half mile. Any thoughts I had about hiking or doing a tent night in the near future are being seriously reconsidered. The desperation to be out and about is a real thing and people are making bad decisions based on that desperation.

Yesterday I drove up to a trailhead of the AT near me and the parking lot was beyond packed; cars were parked down the road for almost a half mile. Any thoughts I had about hiking or doing a tent night in the near future are being seriously reconsidered. The desperation to be out and about is a real thing and people are making bad decisions based on that desperation.

If that is the trailhead I'm thinking of (40/70?), well that crowdedness is not merely due to the coronavirus. It was often overflowing even before it; the line of no parking signs also pre-date the pandemic. The much smaller Thurston Griggs trailhead is less crowded with a much better opportunity to find parking, though there is a bigger climb to get to the AT (but Black Rock is closer to it than to 70).

Everywhere locally and in extensive articles online all hiking areas are way above normal due to corona and other entertainment being locked down.

I just spoke to a friend who is a ranger in one of the national forests in California. He told me that his office has no way of issuing permits on-line, so they are not issuing permits. They don't have, and won't ask, the staff and volunteers to meet with large numbers of the public to issue those permits. They are concerned about the health of their staff and volunteers. I can understand that.

But Desolation Wilderness issues permits through recreation.gov--and they are operating normally right now. So you can get a permit to backpack in Desolation, where you will probably run into other hikers. But not in other, less trafficked areas because those areas don't have enough traffic to justify an on-line reservation system.

I should point out that if you CALL the Desolation Wilderness office, you will be told that you should observe all government guidelines concerning only necessary travel. I was given a clear warning by the wilderness office that I should not make an unnecessary trip to go backpacking--and I should not expect the usual support from EMT or SAR staff if anything goes wrong.

Fair enough.

I've been calling and the permit goes in the night box.

David

Where do you get your information that these are not native Californians? The majority cited here are younger generations---and those are much MORE likely to be native born Californians. It's their parents and grandparents who are more likely to have moved here from somewhere else.

I am a native Californian, but I am extremely suspicious of those who want to make out that we natives know better, or best. I am not sure that is true. We have our own numbers of inconsiderate people...from politicians on down...or up. 

Here's what the study you cited says: "While gender effects in littering tend to be small, men are more likely to admit littering than women (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990; Krauss etal., 1978;Meeker,1997)."  

(Note here--this is a study that is thirty to forty years out of date, and the data is about who ADMITS to littering, not who litters.  Not very helpful in my opinion.)

"In addition, there is some evidence that people living in rural areas are more likely to litter than people living in cities. And individuals from small households (1‐2) are less likely to litter than those from large households (5+) (Geller, 1968; as cited by R.W. Beck, 2007),

A study conducted more than fifty years ago, when our populations were vastly different in every possible way.  

In my personal and obviously anecdotal experience, locals are much more likely to use nature as a garbage dump than are visitors to rural regions---possibly just because they live there, and consequently have more opportunity.  But also because they probably feel more comfortable to flout the laws of the regions they grew up in--particularly if they view those laws as being imposed by outside authorities, or newcomers to the region.  And such locals are quite often native born and bred Californians.