Rocky Mountain officials seek to ease 'good problem' of too many visitors

Nick Coltrain
The Coloradoan
Stay the trail when hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Officials might characterize it as a good problem, but it's a problem nonetheless: Too many folks are visiting Rocky Mountain National Park.

That leaves new park Superintendent Darla Sidles readying to hire someone with an unenviable task: managing ever-growing crowds and making sure visitors have the best experience they can while protecting the park from behaviors that negatively impact the park environment.

"I'd much rather have more people coming than a lack of interest," Sidles told the Larimer County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday.

She was updating the commissioners  on the state of the park. In short, 2016 was another record year, with nearly 4.5 million visitors. A month-by-month comparison to 2015 showed more people visiting every month. Only March was even close to flat.

Overall, 2016 visits were up by about 40 percent compared to 2012, park spokesperson Kyle Patterson said.

One photo they showed featured a long line of cars on Trail Ridge Road on an August weekday. It caused Commissioner Lew Gaiter to perk up and half clarify, half exclaim: "A weekday?!"

"We showed it on Facebook and people thought we Photoshopped cars in," Patterson replied.

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Other photos from the presentation showed individuals feeding wildlife, walking dogs past no dogs allowed signs, the remnants of an illegal campfire and a photographer obviously breaking the park's rules on how close he could get to elk.

Sidles, who joined the park in August, said there was also a number of staffers working at the popular Bear Lake area who quit because they felt they were being abused by guests frustrated with crowding.

However, the park saw fewer overall complaints in 2016 versus 2015. Patterson said it had to do with new traffic mitigation plans, including letting visitors know earlier when a parking lot is full. It's much different to turn around early than to be stuck in traffic for an hour and then have to turn around, she said.

Park officials didn't have an exact plan in place for future congestion mitigation efforts. They plan to bring on someone this fall whose job will be examining solutions. Efforts will have public comment periods and outreach efforts, officials said.

Commissioner Tom Donnelly said he hoped any plan that emerges won't limit access to the park.

"Hopefully, the plan isn't just, 'we're not going to let people park places or use a reservation system to limit who can visit,' " Donnelly said.

Sidles said that's not the goal, as they still want to promote the park and help people experience it.

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