[qrohlf]

This is something where every single person who appreciates public lands should be mad as hell, and letting their elected officials know.

For a more in-depth analysis of the dubious legality of the whole situation, see Matt Stoller's excellent article "Why Is Booz Allen Renting Us Back Our Own National Parks?" [1]

Also, as someone who runs a private, substantially more aggressive availability monitor than outdoorstatus.com (updates every minute rather than every 30 minutes), the unfortunate reality is that the permit scarcity has created something of an automation arms race.

Looking at my analytics for today for a few examples, I see 1 permit availability for the Enchantments that was snagged in less than 5 minutes after being posted, some availability for Lost Coast that disappeared in under 4 minutes, and finally 5 different availabilities in Yosemite's Upper Pines campground that disappeared in under 60 seconds. A 30 minute update rate is, sadly, not going to do you much good if you want to be competitive at reservations for any popular site near the Bay Area on a weekend.

In a lot of cases, the latency of the Twilio -> SMS process is long enough that by the time I get a notification of availability, it's already been claimed by someone else's bot.

This is depressing because, while I have the knowledge and tools to play in this adversarial sandbox of permit acquisition, the majority of people in this country do not. Your access to public lands should not be contingent upon your network programming skills or how many IP addresses you're able to stripe your requests across to avoid ratelimiting.

While I expect to see many more pay-to-play services like Outdoor Status, Campflare, Campnab, Campsite Monitor, etc. pop up over the next few years, what I'd really like to see is a service that disrupts Booz Allen Hamilton with a business model that eliminates its monopoly and the junk fees that are central to how it profiteers off its role as the Ticketmaster of public lands access.

[1] https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-is-booz-allen-renting...

[ryandrake]

As a non-hiker, I had no idea access to national parks was gated behind some unholy combination of Ticketmaster and gambling. This is asinine--but a uniquely American flavor of asinine. The fact that a private business consulting company collects most of the money makes it even more American Asinine. I feel like my fingers are turning red, white, and blue just typing that out.

I (naively) always thought you just drove to your destination, parked and went hiking.

[ploxiln]

Most places in the US are like that - just show up. Some places are too popular and would be way too crowded, and the situation is pretty dire for the most majestic and famous places around SF.

I did the popular half dome trail in yosemite, jeez ... 10 years ago, and despite the limits it was quite a crowded line, at the cable you hold while climbing up the slope of the dome. My family goes hiking in Shenandoah in Virginia almost every year (probably 15 times in my life) and we don't reserve entry or trails or anything, and there's no lines.

Anyway, it's a kinda funny situation - do you want to promote the outdoors to the general populace? Do you want them to be accessible to all? Well you just can't, the popular places will be absolutely crushed and destroyed and quite dangerous too. There's plenty of un-popular places people could go, but they're not popular ...

[zhoujianfu]

They should just make it a raffle instead of first come first served. That’s what all the online drop collectible places do now after a few years of fighting the bot arms race.

[shp0ngle]

...do people actually read the articles before commenting?

There is a raffle. And the money from the ruffle goes to Booz Allen Hamilton.

[klempner]

The legitimate "raffle" structure in question does not typically require people to pay if they don't win the raffle.

[ghaff]

So long as people have to pay if they win the raffle, I'm hard put to see the justification for a raffle entry fee.

[giantg2]

No, it appears half the people here did not read the article nor even look at the graphs.

[greenie_beans]

not for every park. permits for backpacking in glacier national park, which is one of the most coveted permits in the country, was first come first served this year.

[jefftk]

The article doesn't say that Booz's contract lets them keep the lottery fees--do they?

[clusterhacks]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/national-park-fees-booz-allen-6...

[lifeonlars]

Who do you think gets them if they don't go to the parks service?

[cldellow]

Canada has some national parks that do something like this. Lake O'Hara's booking system this year is a random queue:

> In lieu of a random draw, Parks Canada will be employing a queuing system to help manage the expected high demand. Users may navigate to the reservation service webpage beginning at 7:30 AM. At 8:00 AM all users waiting will be randomly assigned a place in the queue. This is not influenced by how long users have been waiting. Any users arriving to the website after 8:00 am will be placed in the back of the line. When users reach their turn, they will be alerted via an on-screen message. At that point, they have 30 minutes to proceed to the reservation website and make a reservation.

[geraldwhen]

If this is queue-it, there are mass automation tools. Even if it isnt, $50 in resi proxies will give you 100 positions in the queue vs 1.

Source: I won a lot of queues by Sony, AMD, and Walmart.

[Retric]

Holding a lottery without limiting people to one entry by say requiring your name to enter is dumb, but I am not surprised this happens.

[ghaff]

I'm going to say that, in this day and age, an online reservation system for very scarce reservations that basically requires sniping to win a slot is a bad system.

[refurb]

This is what they do with The Wave.

I believe they allow 20 per day. 10 are first-come first-served and 10 are a lottery you can enter for a few dollars in advance.

Seems pretty fair to me.

[shp0ngle]

...that is exactly what the actual article is talking about.

The lottery makes most money go to Booz Allen Hamilton.

[refurb]

How do we know the money goes to Booz Allen? Presumably there is some sort of contract between BAH the government to run Recreation.gov?

Does BAH keep the whole fee? Do they keep some of it? Did they get paid $0 and only get the fee?

[ghaff]

The issue is that the losers still apparently pay. Take that away and I agree that some variant of this is probably the optimal system given too many people and not enough slots.

[oh_sigh]

What would stop bot makers from just having thousands of their bots enter the raffle?

[tshaddox]

Charging a nominal fee to enter the raffle might. Like how all raffles work by definition.

[kwhitefoot]

Just make the ticket personal and non-transferable. No need to disadvantage the poor to make it 'fair'.

[giantg2]

That's covered in the article.

[actionfromafar]

That might help a little but rich people will just eat the cost of thousands of fees.

[throw9away6]

Why not just make it a reverse auction at that point? That’s the end state anyway

[bluecalm]

This happens for material things all the time (collectibles, snickers, limited edition of anything) but in case of experiences (concerts, access to trails) the id verification at entry is a good mechanism to defend against it.

[eru]

Why a raffle and not an auction?

Auctions are the standard way to find a price that balances supply and demand.

(Give poor people money, if you think they need the help. No need to decide for them what is best for them by giving them help in the form of tickets. Are you afraid they'll buy booze instead?)

[et-al]

If all one cares about are that only their fellow millionaires get to savor some publicly-owned campsites, then sure that's a great solution.

[eru]

Give poor people money, if you think they need the help. No need to decide for them what is best for them by giving them help in the form of tickets.

Giving them a ticket is equivalent to giving them money, but restricting it be spent on park tickets only. Very condescending and paternalistic, isn't it?

Are you afraid they are going to spend their ticket money on booze?

[throw9away6]

If the number of entries is unlimited then it’s essentially an auction anyway

[xnorswap]

Auctions are terrible because of the uneven distribution of wealth.

You end up with a situation where the wealthy can do everything and the poor can do nothing.

And then there's the super rich, who could buy out the possibility of anyone else participating, literally turning such places into their private playground for eternity if they so wished.

Like, what price could you price it at where:

1. You could afford to go occassionally

2. Elon Musk couldn't just buy out every single ticket for the next decade to make it their personal playground.

There's simply no feasible solution to that.

Just auctioning everything and letting capitalism take its course just denies a vast segment of society from participating at all for activities where demand outstrips supply.

Supply & Demand only works if supply can be increased, so that as prices rise there's incentive for greater supply.

For things like National Parks or Taylor Swift concerts, price discovery through "supply and demand" does not work because supply can't increase to match supply no matter the price.

[Sankozi]

Not sure how you come up with point 1 when talking about auctions of a very limited resource. Lets focus on the point 2.

You are vastly overestimating buying power of the richest people. Lets assume that some of them are really irrational and want to buy access to the single place by selling whole their wealth.

X entries per day, 365 day in a year, that is 3650*x tickets to buy out to cover 10 years.

Musk wealth: 171 000 000 000

Divided by 3650 = 46 849 315

If we sell only 50 tickets daily it is less than million of $ that Musk have available for each ticket.

There is over 60 million people with wealth higher wealth than that. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/203930/global-wealth-dis...).

If park increases number of tickets to 500 daily (~21 per hour) then we are talking about 600 million richest people that can try to outbid Musk on a single ticket.

In reality people like Musk probably would never spend even 1/100 of their wealth for any single attraction. If they had, they would not be that rich. Additionally park could easily increase number of tickets if those are not used.

[eru]

Give poor people money, if you want to help them.

Giving them a park ticket is equivalent to giving them the auction price for the ticket but restricting them to use it on park tickets. Very condescending and paternalistic.

> Supply & Demand only works if supply can be increased, so that as prices rise there's incentive for greater supply.

No? Where did you get that idiosyncratic notion from?

Auctions work just fine for eg van Gogh paintings, and they have been in decidedly fixed supply since 1890.

Auctions also work well for things that are in fixed demand. Of course, in that case you have suppliers bid, not buyers.

You can also have a two-sided auction where both suppliers and buyers bid.

[lukas099]

This would be politically unviable. Just look at responses to your comment.

[eru]

Indeed. Though that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

You know how eg abolishing slavery or letting women vote was once politically unviable.

[bluecalm]

It's not like raffle solves the problem. Instead of bots you can multi accounters/users. The logistics is more complicated but doable if the item is desirable enough.

[cowsandmilk]

Grand Canyon’s river lottery doesn’t use recreation.gov and has measures to prevent multi accounters including lifetime bans (which have been enforced) if you apply with multiple accounts in the same lottery.

[bluecalm]

I was answering to a comment any collectibles. There multi-accounting is rampant and little can be done about it. When it comes to non-physical goods then a lot more can be done about enforcement.

[greiskul]

For something physical, specially something run by the government, you can ask people during account creation for some identification like full name + date of birth, not allow duplicate accounts to enter the same raffle, and check the id of the winners when they get there (so you don't have companies creating bots).

[throw9away6]

Harder to game, if desired enough people will still game it by buying entries for others

[TeMPOraL]

What if we tackled the bot arms race differently? Instead of fighting it, embrace it - and fight the market for support services instead. That is, let people script their way if they want to, just make them do it in the open, and treat it as a match-making problem.

The scheme would be as follows. There's N levels on the ladder, with some amount of tickets allocated to each level. Bottom level is for normal people without tech augmentation; most tickets are allocated there, and aggressive bot detection is employed. You can implement a raffle there if it feels more fair. Remaining levels on the ladder are for those who want a chance to get ahead with automation. Apply Elo or whatever chess players or Overwatch uses to make sure people compete at their level of sophistication. This would reward and incentivize individuals learning useful life skills, while making selling the tools less useful.

Of course I can think of 10 reasons why this wouldn't work in practice, but hey, I never heard anyone even considering this idea before, so maybe it can be rescued somehow.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I want to go hiking, not play some stupid game.

[0_____0]

It's getting to the point where areas that are under consideration for becoming National Park land get significant pushback from locals — we don't want to become another Yellowstone, they say!

In the Northeast you do see some spots getting a little crowded but it's absolutely nothing like the tourism-industrial complex that are the big western national parks. Acadia is about as bad as it gets here, but mostly it looks like "theres a lot of folks here." Yellowstone is a mess of badly driven RVs, yahoos ripping around on rented side-by-sides, just a lot of really ugly concentrated MURCA.

[InitialLastName]

> Acadia is about as bad as it gets here,

Acadia is about all there is in the northeast, in terms of National Parks.

The positive side is that there's a ton of wilderness in the northeast that doesn't suffer from the National Park marketing badge (and thus any draw from the rest of the country), and so are less insane. Even so, some of the state parks within a reasonable trip of NYC (notably Harriman/Bear Mountain) can get a bit crazy.

[ghaff]

There is now the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine--although that was (and probably still is) controversial among some locals. It's fairly remote by northeastern standards. It's adjacent to Baxter State Park but the latter significantly limits cars in the popular area of the park.

The issue for locals wasn't so much crowding as I recall but concerns about restrictions to traditional sporting uses of the land. I haven't really followed how all that played out.

[InitialLastName]

Ah, I didn't realize that had been nationalized (not technically a "National Park" though).

I've paddled through the "waters" bit a few times (geez, 20 years ago); lack of access would definitely help the overcrowding.

[ghaff]

Acadia is broken up enough that, if you stay away from certain sections of the park loop road and Mt. Cadillac, it's pretty manageable. Though even the western parks are a bit like that. The Yosemite Valley is a mob scene for much of the year. But there are actually pretty large and very nice sections of the park that aren't nearly as bad.

[allturtles]

> My family goes hiking in Shenandoah in Virginia almost every year (probably 15 times in my life) and we don't reserve entry or trails or anything, and there's no lines.

I went to look up hikes in Shenandoah since this sounds like it could be part of a nice road trip with my family, and ironically I found that the most popular trailhead requires getting tickets through recreation.gov: https://www.nps.gov/shen/planyourvisit/faqs-oldrag.htm

So perhaps the problem is spreading?

Luckily it seems it's not nearly at "The Wave" levels of scarcity, you can actually get tickets on most days: https://www.recreation.gov/ticket/10088450/ticket/10088451

[alistairSH]

Old Rag is a fairly unique hike for the area. The upper part of the hike is an exposed rock scramble with good views. The hike, in total, is long enough to be challenging, but not really technical or dangerous. And it's close enough to DC (<2 hours) that weekends were a madhouse, especially during COVID.

The remained of the park, and all the surrounding areas, are first-come, either free or with minimal permit/entrance fees.

[ghaff]

Day hiking permits are fairly uncommon on US federal lands in my experience.

Backpacking permits are significantly more common but except for the extreme cases as are mentioned in the article are fairly easy to come by--except maybe at the most extreme times--and are commonly free (except for maybe parking).

[foobar_______]

Reservations only became required for Old Rag somewhat recently. I think this is a covid thing. I'm really torn, I want people to be happy and healthy outside but covid and social media has made doing this a mad house. Regulating day tickets is a necessity at most places nowadays

[rob74]

The exception that confirms the rule is The Wave, which is located somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the Utah-Arizona border and only accessible via a lengthy hike, but has the distinction of having been the epitome of "instagrammable" already years before Instagram was invented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(Arizona)

[tshaddox]

I’m not sure what you mean about that being an exception. The Wikipedia article details an extremely strict application process to access that place.

[rob74]

What I meant is that it's not one of the "majestic and famous places around SF", like Yosemite, it's really remote - but due to the strict limitation to only ~64 people per day, it's still the most sought after destination (making the most money for Booz Allen Hamilton).

[tiedieconderoga]

You can just show up and park. You can buy an annual pass directly from the government for ~$100 that covers campsite/entrance fees in pretty much every national park, or put some cash in an envelope with a form and leave it in a dropbox at the lot.

The problem is peak seasons. If you show up to Yellowstone without a reservation on the 4th of July weekend, you'll be lucky if you can even get into the park, much less stay there or appreciate its natural beauty.

So if you want to visit a park during a holiday, school vacation week, or most of the Summer, you need to deal with the bloated mess of a ticketing system which was created by the cheapest new grads that the lowest-bidding rent-seeking leech of a contractor could come up with.

My advice: get used to cold weather and visit in the off season. Nobody is making reservations to hike in Bryce Canyon in the middle of December.

[ghaff]

One caveat. The America the Beautiful pass does not cover campgrounds that have a nightly fee.

In general, I agree about trying to go to parks off peak season (and getting away from the more popular trails). That said, your hiking and other options can be a lot more limited at many parks that get a lot of snow in the winter relative to other seasons even if you have winter gear. (I've been to Bryce in the winter and it was hard to follow a trail in the canyon.)

[patrickwalton]

That said, Bryce canyon is stunning in the middle of December (if there's snow).

[elbigbad]

The post to whom you’re responding definitely overstates it. Most places are mostly just show up, there’s regularly or always ways to simply day hike anywhere — including the Enchantments, which are unrestricted for day hiking and I’ve personally day hiked in a day. Not allowing all comers on all days is prudent because our national parks are a precious resource. I’ve personally seen trails being eroded over years, it stinks, and more people on those trails cause more erosion. But yes you nearly always can simply drive out, park, and hike.

BAH is a scourge and absolutely a problem though.

[throwaway2037]

    I’ve personally seen trails being eroded over years, it stinks, and more people on those trails cause more erosion.

Why don't they rotate the trails? I've seen this done on Jeju, South Korea. They close an over-worn section, then open a parallel section.

[whinenot]

Oftentimes, there is only one physically possible route to the most popular Instagramable view, like Vernal Fall in Yosemite NP or Angels Landing in Zion NP.

[throwaway2037]

    most popular Instagramable view

Oh, that makes sense. Ok, then close the trail for 6-12 months. That should do.

[eru]

They should just auction the ticket off. Very straight-forward, and all the money can go to the park.

(Give poor people money, if you think they need the help. No need to decide for them what is best for them by giving them help in the form of tickets.)

[greiskul]

If all the money goes to the park, none is going to the poor people. Seems like you are advocating for a system where rich people get to go to public parks, and poor people get nothing.

And if you are doing a raffle for park tickets, you are not deciding to "help them in the form of tickets" for them. They signed up for the tickets. They want to go to the park. Is it a bad idea to allow poor people that want to access a park to have a chance of doing so?

And auctions are a way of optimizing pricing of stuff. But not everything in life is about money. For instance, organ donation recipients. Do you think an auction system for organs would be a better world than the existing systems? Should we just give the poor people that wouldn't be able to afford an auction for an organ some money, and then let them die?

[eru]

> If all the money goes to the park, none is going to the poor people. Seems like you are advocating for a system where rich people get to go to public parks, and poor people get nothing.

I don't understand. It seems like you are suggesting mixing up your welfare system with your park system?

I suggest: have one system that gives poor people money. And have another different system to run the parks.

> Do you think an auction system for organs would be a better world than the existing systems?

Yes, vastly superior. Thanks for bringing this up.

See eg https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/06/the_fungible_ki.htm... ro https://www.econtalk.org/tina-rosenberg-on-the-kidney-market... or https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2012/SheltonMcKenzi... or https://www.econlib.org/archives/2003/03/organ_transplan.htm...

[bobsmooth]

>If all the money goes to the park, none is going to the poor people. Seems like you are advocating for a system where rich people get to go to public parks, and poor people get nothing.

Poor people weren't going to enter a lottery for the chance to visit a park anyway. At least this plan gives all the money to the park.

[arrrg]

Those lotteries generally do have a relatively high likelihood of getting you a spot. Paying $10 for a fifty percent chance of a permit vs. paying $100 in an auction does make a difference.

I really don’t understand where your claim that poor people wouldn’t enter the lottery is coming from. That seems like a nonsensical conclusion to me.

To me a lottery seems like the perfect solution, it‘s just that some of the current implementation details suck.

The fee to enter should be quite low, its only function to reduce gambling the system (besides having policies in place that also do that). It should not be possible to enter multiple times.

The service provider of the lottery should not be paid proportional or in relation to how many people enter the lottery. At least not in any kind of directly coupled way. All income from the lottery should first go to the parks and then they pay the service provider from that income.

And that‘s the problem solved.

Lotteries are fair, at least if you can’t enter multiple times and if the chance of getting a permit is still somewhat decent.

[eru]

> Those lotteries generally do have a relatively high likelihood of getting you a spot. Paying $10 for a fifty percent chance of a permit vs. paying $100 in an auction does make a difference.

What makes you think that the auction price would go up to $100?

Assuming they sell raffle tickets to all comers, but they have a limited, fixed number of winners per day that gain entry; then I would assume that world where a $10 ticket give you a 50% chance of entry is a world where the auction clearing price would be roughly $20.

The kind of lottery you describe (where you can enter multiple times) is basically equivalent to an auction. Just more complicated and less predictable.

[pr0zac]

> Poor people weren't going to enter a lottery for the chance to visit a park anyway.

What? Poor people like to take vacations also and national parks were traditionally a rather cheap way to do so.

Theres also a lot of poor folks who's purpose in life is literally visiting those parks. Recreation.gov owns big wall climbing permits for Yosemite for instance and a significant number of young dirt bag climbers that live in their cars in order to climb full time and are very definitely poor apply for those every year.

[rjmunro]

All the money could go to the park from the lottery if they set up the contract that way. Alternatively, they could set up a contract such that the park gets a fixed amount per visitor no matter what the auction price ends up being.

I think they should do half the tickets by lottery, half by auction. Lottery tickets should require ID and/or photo upload when you enter to prevent reselling. The lottery/auction operator should get a percentage of the total money, with the park service keeping most of it.

[refurb]

That doesn’t make a lot of sense.

If you give poor people money so every can equally bid on the auction, then why not just make it a lottery and not bother giving poor people money they’ll just give back through auction?

[maxerickson]

Presumably they are talking about giving poor people money out of a different bucket, so it isn't "just" going back through the auction, the people that receive it have the opportunity to allocate it to their needs and desires.

[eru]

You give poor people money, so they can make their own decisions on what they want to spend it on.

Instead of restricting them ad hoc to eg national park entries or whatever you think should be provided in-kind by raffles.

[refurb]

If your goal is to make national park entries more fair that seems like a very indirect way of doing it.

[ricw]

You can quickly complain to governor newsom via this link (the article lists mostly Californian parks - hence this being appropriate):

https://www.gov.ca.gov/contact/

[greenie_beans]

i think you'd need to complain to your federal representatives since the national parks and the booz allen contract are overseen by the federal government

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

If you find yourself stressed by the process of reserving campsites online, I’d encourage you to just go to random public land and camp there. It’s legal by default to camp on BLM and Forest Service land and you do not need permission from Booz Allen Hamilton to do it. There are endless adventures to be had and plenty of room for everyone. People competing to fill out online forms so they can be allocated appointments to enjoy specific small segments of the great outdoors is a truly bizarre phenomenon. If you enjoy participating in that system, more power to you, but if you don’t, then just go anywhere in the much larger portion of public land that isn’t administered in that fashion.

[et-al]

Yes, but please, please, please leave no trace (LNT):

https://www.nps.gov/articles/leave-no-trace-seven-principles...

[lazyasciiart]

It is not really bizarre that people really want to go to the places that have e.g built toilets.

[granshaw]

Not everyone wants to pee squatting in the bushes, or not have access to running water or electricity

[local_crmdgeon]

Why not? That's what camping is.

What you're describing isn't just "this is public land. Enjoy"

[mschuster91]

The core problem is a tragedy of the commons scenario. Basically, the demand for tourism to natural parks (or, such as in the case of Venice, Amsterdam and others, entire cities) is way too large to allow unfettered access by the public.

So there's two options - limit access to those who can afford it (e.g. by raising serious tourism taxes), or do it in a lottery. Both have obvious downsides: making it expensive is direct discrimination against the poor, and lotteries risk families not being able to go because not everyone gets a ticket or, as we're seeing here, people gaming the system to bypass the lottery or a black market run by scalpers.

There is no good solution.

[lifeonlars]

> the demand for tourism to natural parks is way too large to allow unfettered access by the public

I'm not sure this is true. The United States has a huge amount of wilderness and federal land. The problem is that most people want to go to a small number of very popular places.

Allowing as many people as possible to have a nice time in nature, whether by providing facilities, informing potential visitors of their options, managing access to popular or vulnerable sites, etc, is exactly what the Bureau of Land Management are supposed to do. The fact that there is a single agency in control means that it's not really an example of the tragedy of the commons, either.

[wcarron]

> The problem is that most people want to go to a small number of very popular places.

That is because they are the prettiest and most desirable destinations. This is unsurprising. People want to see Yosemite, not some barren nothingness out near Ridgecrest, CA or Kingman, AZ.

Just because land is owned by the USFS or BLM and has public access doesn't mean it has any real recreational or attractive value that would draw visitors.

[lifeonlars]

Nothing has intrinsic recreational or attractive value, including the Grand Canyon, the Niagara Falls and Yosemite. Desire is often mimetic.

The counterparts to this are that a) many people would rather go somewhere slightly less attractive that isn't overcrowded and b) lots of people are attracted, at least in part, by going somewhere novel.

The fact that there is a certain challenge involved in getting as many people as possible (but no more) to the prettiest sites while finding less pretty but still enjoyable alternatives to those who can't make it is exactly why land management and tourism agencies exist.

[dbspin]

You've forgotten the effect of advertising. There's enormous induced demand for these things, which could be instantly reduced by a prohibition (or time limitation) of advertising, broadcast rights etc. Right now BAH are enormously incentivised to promote the hell out of these places, as are third parties that help you 'game the system'. Take the money out of the system and you limit it to organic reach - you aikido the pay to speak nature of contemporary social media.

[mschuster91]

Instagram is enough these days to completely wreck any place suitable for pictures.

Here in Germany, the Königssee waterfall had to be completely closed for at least five years to give nature a chance to rebuild, after Instagram users caused enormous devastation [1] - trash, fires, noise scaring wildlife including some species of rare, protected birds, 3km worth of trails through the bushes, erosion caused by the trails... and it's by far not the only place.

[1] https://www.ksta.de/panorama/wasserfall-hotspot-am-koenigsse...

[foobar_______]

Ya it is not "official" advertising I guess, but Instagram put the nail in the coffin for so many outdoor locations

[dbspin]

One guy at the entrance collects phones and puts them in a locker. Fine for unofficial pics. Solved.

[pbhjpbhj]

How do scalpers get around ID requirements?

Purchases/lotteries/whatever allow one entry per natural person, using an ID. You have to indicate ownership of that ID to take up the entry ticket. Then you have to show the ID on entry. Typically such places will buy back tickets and you get a refund if they sell.

You can use 'receipt of state assistance' (in the UK this is called 'benefits') as a marker for poverty [definitely not perfect!] and only allow access to, for example, a low cost lottery on entry for such poor people.

It's not perfect, but is that not at least good?

[adrr]

What about people that don't have IDs which are the poor and also kids?

[greenie_beans]

tragedy of the commons is a myth. https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false...

[0xffff2]

At best, this article makes an argument that the tragedy is not inevitable. It does nothing to dispel the idea that it is the default and most common result.

[greenie_beans]

the point is that the tragedy of the commons is a lousy excuse.

[asdfman123]

Off topic, but I realized that I can initiate a backpacking trip by walking out of my front door near El Camino, over the foothills, and all the way to Half Moon Bay. Maybe secretly camping in a state park up there in between.

This is extremely novel to me, being from Houston, and I definitely want to try it now.

[qrohlf]

Have a peek at https://doingmiles.com/hike-sf/ for some longer itineraries like this. Lots of options if you're willing to do a little stealth camping (please be ethical/considerate [1])

[1] good writeup from the same authors https://doingmiles.com/techniques-stealth/

[zupzupper]

Look up the skyline to sea trail, it's near you.and wonderful.

[greendave]

Note that much of that trail is still closed from the 2020 CZU fire (basically all the sections in Big Basin - about 12 miles).

[zupzupper]

Oh dang, I'd have thought they'd opened back up by now. Well shoot, good to know.

[seattle_spring]

Side tangent: Wow, the Lost Coast is a lottery now? I through-hiked it in 2007 and no one was there. I barely meet anyone who has even heard of it.

[greendave]

It’s not a lottery, it’s all 100% reservable on October 1 for the next year. I’ve been 10 times in the past 15 years and every year the permits are harder to get because of the demand and the bots. The irony is that the permits are so popular and the fees so low that I’d estimate 30%+ of the permits that are bought actually don’t get used. On my most recent visit, we saw less than 10 people total on our first day a few weeks back.

[asciimike]

Seriously. I did it in ~2010 and ~2013 and we saw a few dozen people, besides the commune living at the south end.

[ghaff]

Yeah, there are a relative handful of places in the US/North America that, during remotely popular times, access has to be rationed for good reasons. The Enchantments are definitely one of those--I'm resigned to never be organized/lucky enough to go there (and that's not even a national park). And once you're going to ration, it's just a question of how: very high fees, lottery for applications within some window, first-come first-served x days in advance, queue at the ranger office on the morning of and hope you get lucky or have to go somewhere else...

Excessive fees going to a for-profit company is a separate matter but doesn't change the fact that, for any reasonable fee structure, way more people want to camp/stay/hike in certain places than those places can reasonably support.

Different approaches just have different drawbacks. In general, I'd probably disfavor technological sniping approaches for most sites in this day and age in favor of a lottery with a wider window. (And for most public properties just increasing pricing isn't really the right answer.)

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Excessive fees going to a for-profit company is a separate matter

It's actually the entire subject of TFA.

[heelix]

Here in Minnesota, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) adjacent to Canada is on a permit system as well. Within 3 minutes of the permits opening in January for this season, all the traditional weekend sites entry points on the Grand Marais side were gone. In the 20-30 years I've been doing it, I've never seen anything like it before.

Our camping group is absolutely coding bots for next year. Going in as a human a couple minutes after the bell does not work. This should not be.

[smilbandit]

In this day and age I feel that things like this should have an in person registration for a few days or week before the online registration.

[gnramires]

One common solution to this type of problem is a (different kind of!) lottery. You should register for one or more time slots (up to N), and there should be a lottery to decide who goes (just randomly). After winning, your other reservations should reset.

[quickthrower2]

If SMS latency is too much why not release an app for your site to give an instant notification?

[qrohlf]

I solved the response-time problem in a different way, but that would be one option you could use to cut down how much a notification pipeline contributes to your time-to-claim-permit latency.

[snarf21]

Curious: Does a policy of making these things non-transferable solve the issue?

[bitshiftfaced]

How do you fix the problem?

[carterharrison]

campflare aint pay 2 play #freeforthepeople