Park Your Disappointment Here

I seem to spend at least some time hiking the trails in the National Parks of the Rockies each summer. I really have to say that I continue to be disappointed by the abysmal level of trail maintenance, backcountry campground maintenance and that sort of thing. It seems as though National Parks has given up on looking after anything further than a couple of km from the main roads and the hordes of tourists. Bridges over major rivers and streams are out, large deadfall blocks many trails and the backcountry campgrounds are scruffy, much as they were 25 or more years ago when I first started hiking in these areas.

Now I know the Parks have a cash flow problem and are chronically underfunded, but they have been collecting backcountry fees for years and those fees plus park entry fees have been rising much more rapidly than the rate of inflation in recent years. Where is that money being used? Do the Parks have trail maintenance crews? Do they ever leave town with a chain saw? How scruffy will they let the backcountry "facilities" get before they just fall apart? Is this a plot to discourage people from even visiting the backcountry?

What Parks doesn't seem to understand is that if there is a log across a trail, people will go around it, making a new trail and damaging more vegetation. Keeping things clean and maintained goes a long way to fostering respect for our wilderness. Parks needs to clean up its act.