A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known places...

General discussions on hiking in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest
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SWriverstone
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A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known places...

Post by SWriverstone » March 6th, 2016, 9:14 pm

I'm fairly new to Oregon—moved here from West Virginia a year ago. In the Appalachians, it's safe to say there is nothing that hasn't been thoroughly explored (the surrounding population and history are just too dense). So I'm fascinated by the existence of places here in the west that are so far removed from even the outdoor crowd that they seem entirely unknown (whether they really are or not).

As a child, I loved exploring new/old places—places that I knew hadn't seen footsteps in a very long time. I wrote about this in an essay on Medium.

So it's natural that as an outdoor-loving adult, I've always sought places that are off the well-trodden path. When exploring opportunities for hikes in a new place (like Oregon), I usually avoid the popular places (with the exception of those "You've GOT to see them" destinations).

Like many, I spend a lot of time online (especially in winter) researching future hikes and adventures. So it didn't take me long to find the OFG episode on Valhalla. It also didn't take me long to find (and read) the seemingly hundreds of posts here and elsewhere about it (during which process I found the name Hyperbole Canyon—a name I like much better, and will use).

Not long after, I discovered Devils Staircase (and the proposed wilderness area surrounding it). And once again, there was some controversy over the trailhead (such as it is) being revealed to the masses.

I want to see both of these places, and I'm capable of doing it alone if necessary (I've done a lot of bushwhacking in my life—and it's no less difficult in the Appalachians than in Oregon). And for me, part of the fun—and challenge—is NOT having a guide, or not going with a big organized group. (But a solid companion or two would be fine—I'm not hell-bent on solitary adventure.) I'm very good with a GPS (I have 3) and know their limitations very well. I was also a Boy Scout and have strong old-school orienteering skills.

But my point in this post isn't to justify me going to these places. On the contrary, I read all the posts, and I wonder: am I part of the problem? (The "problem," of course, being the eventual destruction of these places from sheer human use and traffic.) In some sense I am. But am I any more a part of the problem than the first people to explore these places on their own? Seems to me that on some level, it would be valid to say the first time a human goes where no human went before, that's it—the damage is done. The door is open.

I get the sense of secrecy and ownership early explorers of these places have. I do. Hell, I'm from the eastern U.S.—where there are just too damn many people, period. (There are people EVERYWHERE in the east. Everywhere.) I've seen what happens to places that suddenly become all the rage and get trampled and littered to death. But the degree of destruction generally parallels accessibility. As many have pointed out with regard to Hyperbole Canyon and Devils Staircase: very few people will attempt to get to these places. I might, but most of my friends think I'm nuts for trying.

I also get the frustration with the media sensationalizing these places. Count me as someone who really didn't enjoy watching guys on OFG hoot and holler in the slot canyons. I would have been FAR more moved by video footage that showed the scenery with NO humans in the shot (but of course that makes for "boring" television).

So I ponder all this as I decide whether or not to hike to Devils Staircase or Hyperbole Canyon. A part of me genuinely thinks "So what if I don't see these places? I'm happy knowing they're there—and hopefully still pristine." But then a part of me thinks "Why not? I'm not an idiot—I have deep respect for the natural world. I take only photos, leave only footprints (and try to avoid footprints if possible). I'm not going to destroy these places. But if I see them, do I post photos? Do I write about it? (For wouldn't that be aiding and abetting their eventual destruction?)

And I admit to a bit of selfishness: if (heaven forbid) these places (and others like them) are one day trampled beneath a stream of out-of-shape visitors with iPhones and Big Gulps in their hands, then I want to see them before they're trampled. I feel a slight sense of urgency. I want to be that grandpop some day who says "I remember what it was like before it surpassed Silver Falls to become one of the most popular waterfall hikes in Oregon."

Finally, as others have pointed out repeatedly, it's not difficult to find these places once they're out. Any intelligent person can find them—especially someone like me who has dozens of mapping resources and forums bookmarked and knows how to pause a video showing a map and step through it frame-by-frame, then compare this with topo maps until I've found the exact spot.

And to take this one step further: it's not difficult (from the standpoint of an intellectual exercise) to find relatively unexplored areas in the state and go explore them—if this is your goal. spend enough time online and in libraries, talk with enough people, and the "blank spots" become glaringly obvious. If you're someone who seeks out blank spots, are you part of the problem? (Just a question—not suggesting you are!)

Anyway, just figured I'd post up about this. It's a valuable discussion to have, as long as it doesn't degenerate into flame wars. If anyone else has any thoughts, post up! :-)

Scott

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Re: A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known place

Post by pdxgene » March 6th, 2016, 10:40 pm

Devil's Staircase was visited by members of Congress and most likely staffers and subject of plenty of tv coverage. There's a thread spanning a couple years and multiple pages in one of the other forums, the invitation one i think. I started it...lol... We still haven't gone.. :cry:
Once these places are on tv it's not like they are any kind of secret anymore. There might be other more hidden ones that few have seen and fewer have spoke of?

But I find that going on weekdays with a reasonably early start I can even go to some of the most popular places (Paradise Park type places) at the high time of year and see few if any people and even then mostly on the way back. If that helps...

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Re: A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known place

Post by Bosterson » March 7th, 2016, 12:13 am

SWriverstone wrote: And I admit to a bit of selfishness: if (heaven forbid) these places (and others like them) are one day trampled beneath a stream of out-of-shape visitors with iPhones and Big Gulps in their hands, then I want to see them before they're trampled.

...If you're someone who seeks out blank spots, are you part of the problem?
These are questions that a lot of us on here grapple with. Regarding the former, I think we empathize. I regret not being able to visit Nepal 10-20 years ago, before the growing middle classes in China and India were able to visit as tourists, and as a result, many of the popular trekking routes are now endless tea house strip malls, so to speak. But it is selfish - the presumption is that I/we have more of a "right" to be a tourist elsewhere than someone else does, which is clearly absurd. It's not an issue with a good solution, aside from some sort of mass reduction in the human population.

Per your second question, the whole issue of people seeking out popularized "wild" areas (Devil's Staircase, Nepal) actually implies that if your goal is truly blank spots, then you'll find solitude, as most people don't seem willing or able to do the work to discover these areas, but rather go once the information is publicly available. There is thus a case to be made for not revealing much information about newly discovered "wild" areas. If you both seek those areas and forego the OFG sensationalizing schtick, there are realistically still plenty of wild and/or unpopular areas to visit - especially if you're willing to go somewhere sufficiently rugged or remote. The best deterrent to crowds that I know if is a difficult approach. :)

But overall, if you find the next Hyperbole Canyon, maybe tell your friends, but not OFG. And don't even get me started on people's goddamn Instagram feeds.... ;)
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Rancid9999
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Re: A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known place

Post by Rancid9999 » March 7th, 2016, 8:02 am

Go. Go now. Just don't brag about it later. Let other enjoy the thrill of discovery.

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Re: A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known place

Post by drm » March 7th, 2016, 8:04 am

One reason I don't worry _too_ much about this is that given the effort to visit wild places, there are plenty of them out there. Having a few more get popularized won't reduce the solitude overall that much.

The problem comes if you have your own favorite places that you want to stay relatively unvisited. This is related to the person who builds a home in the countryside and finds 20 years later that the city has expanded to surround them.

I admit to having some of the latter places that I don't post about all that much. But now some of them burned in forest fires in the last year or two and are almost unrecognizable, without or without people. Say all you want about fire being a natural part of the ecosystem - sitting on ash-covered ground next to black sticks is not the same as a beautiful forest.

So I guess I come down to realizing that my few years here are a tiny speck and I will find places to enjoy them as long as my health permits.

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Re: A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known place

Post by SWriverstone » March 7th, 2016, 9:50 am

Thanks for the thoughts all. I tend to agree that especially here in Oregon, which is relatively vast (with relatively few people), it's not difficult to find solitary places. Just 2 days ago I found incredible solitude and wildness on a dinky little hike just 30 miles from Eugene. Except for that damned GOLF BALL I found in an alpine meadow. Grrrr. (But that's the issue, right?)

I was thinking this morning of another deeply moving experience for me that I've not posted photos (or GPX tracks) about: finding the Grove of Titans in Jed Smith Redwoods State Park near Crescent City, CA.

The location of the biggest redwoods has always been kept secret, sort of. While the state park doesn't publicize the location (or even existence) of the Grove of Titans, I was a bit surprised (and saddened) to find that it's now on Google Maps!

But a small ray of light: even with the location of the grove on Google Maps, it's still not easy to find. It still requires a hike of several miles, and a bit of bushwhacking—as well as doing some homework. I found it, but only after memorizing several photos of the unique redwood trees in the grove—so that when I actually saw them, I knew what they were.

And while the grove was by no means "trampled," it was obvious that plenty of people had been there, as evidenced by several faint footpaths beaten through the ferns around the grove.

As it was, I was in awe of finding these giants. I stepped carefully (and avoided stepping on any of the titans' roots), stood in the silence of that enormous cathedral for 20-30mins, took some photos (which were futile—ever try to photograph a nearly 400-foot tall tree? LOL), and quietly left without a trace. Except, yes, I probably "pressed in" those faint footpaths a bit more.

For what it's worth, the location of Hyperion, THE tallest known redwood, is a better-kept secret. And I'm fine with that—and don't plan to seek it out.

Scott

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retired jerry
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Re: A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known place

Post by retired jerry » March 7th, 2016, 9:57 am

if some wild places are popularized, then that will reduce the pressure on others?

if a bunch of people start going to Devil's Staircase, for example, it may damage that aesthetic spot, but it's a tiny fraction of the total wilderness so plant and animal life won't be impacted over-all, which is more important than the unspolied aesthetic of Devil's Staircase

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Re: A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known place

Post by SWriverstone » March 7th, 2016, 10:19 am

retired jerry wrote:if some wild places are popularized, then that will reduce the pressure on others?

if a bunch of people start going to Devil's Staircase, for example, it may damage that aesthetic spot, but it's a tiny fraction of the total wilderness so plant and animal life won't be impacted over-all, which is more important than the unspolied aesthetic of Devil's Staircase
Good point Jerry—and that's certainly true in the short-term (only so many hikers to go around). I'm not sure that'll be true in the long-term (population growth)...but then it's also true that as a nation, our population continues to become more and more urbanized. So in the future, things are looking better—if we just get away from big cities. :-)

In the case of a place like Devils Staircase, I tend to agree with someone (in another thread) who said it makes sense for those who have been there to share a GPX track...or for anyone who goes to clear the path a little more...so subsequent hikers don't make their own trail. If I go, I'd certainly rather stick to a previously-used trail (no matter how faint), than just go busting through the forest creating yet another path.

Scott

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Re: A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known place

Post by Koda » March 7th, 2016, 10:33 am

retired jerry wrote:if some wild places are popularized, then that will reduce the pressure on others?
SWriverstone wrote:In the case of a place like Devils Staircase, I tend to agree with someone (in another thread) who said it makes sense for those who have been there to share a GPX track...or for anyone who goes to clear the path a little more...so subsequent hikers don't make their own trail. If I go, I'd certainly rather stick to a previously-used trail (no matter how faint), than just go busting through the forest creating yet another path.

I disagree. Popularizing wild places is the very act of putting pressure on other locations.

I also strongly disagree about posting GPS data on unestablished locations. That is being part of the actual problem in itself, enabling people unqualified or otherwise who wouldn’t go on their own.

and you don’t create a new path by simply busting thru the forest, in fact you leave less of a trace by finding your own way.

SWriverstone wrote:But my point in this post isn't to justify me going to these places. On the contrary, I read all the posts, and I wonder: am I part of the problem? (The "problem," of course, being the eventual destruction of these places from sheer human use and traffic.)
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SWriverstone
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Re: A few thoughts on the broadcasting of little-known place

Post by SWriverstone » March 7th, 2016, 1:39 pm

I might agree with you Koda. (I'm still trying to figure it out.) Seems that the crux of the issue (as I suggest above) is...who exactly has a "right" to go to ANY wild place? Some would say human presence is degrading—period. Admittedly, that's a somewhat extremist position.

Is there a certain minimum level of energy (possibly measured in joules) required to make it "okay" for someone to go to a wild place? Or perhaps a certain amount of "street cred" attributed to that person? (I'm only being partially tongue-in-cheek.)

And if 50 (or 500) people visit Devils Staircase or Hyperbole Canyon next year—each on their own—and none of them says a peep about it—does that mean those places are in great shape?

Of course the term for what we're talking about (which I'm sure everyone knows) is the Tragedy of the Commons. According to Wikipedia,
The political economist Elinor Ostrom stated that it is often claimed that only private ownership or government regulation can prevent the "tragedy", however it is in the interests of the users of a commons to keep it running, and complex social schemes are often devised by them for maintaining common resources efficiently.
Interestingly, the same political economist cited 4 things that help avoid the "tragedy" (in our case, the trampling to death of a wilderness location)...
• resources with definable boundaries (e.g., land) can be preserved much more easily (e.g. a designated Wilderness)
• there must be a perceptible threat of resource depletion, and it must be difficult to find substitutes (no issues there!)
• small and stable populations with a thick social network and social norms promoting conservation do better
• there must be appropriate community-based rules and procedures in place with built-in incentives for responsible use and punishments for overuse. When the commons is taken over by non-locals, those solutions can no longer be used.
Not trying to become a political philosopher here—but what I take from that is that the tragedy isn't always a foregone conclusion, and it's possible to protect a place even while letting hundreds or thousands of people enjoy it.

But if we assume that increased human activity (as a result of providing GPX tracks, for example) will destroy a place, then we're back to my point above: how much human presence is too much? (And who qualifies to go?)

Scott

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