Snow cones and slurpees in Yosemite! But do we need more winter tourists too?
Another cool video in the Yosemite Nature Notes series, highlighting an interesting wintertime phenomenon. As the rangers note in the video, not many people know about this interesting business of - and perhaps this video will encourage more people to go check it out, especially in cold wet springs like this one. While I laud (and share) the rangers' and this film's creator's desire to share more of these natural wonders with people - and they sure do want me to go check these things out - I am also conflicted about whether more tourists is what Yosemite needs! Winter is perhaps one time of year when this most heavily visited of parks gets a chance to catch a breath and recover a bit from the summer crush of touring humanity! Do we want to reduce that period of rest too? But, if we don't share these natural wonders with the people, will the people support protecting fragile places where frazil ice can still form such beautiful icy lava flows? Therein lie both the genius and the dilemma of National Parks, don't they?
Hat-tip: YosemiteSteve
2 comments:
Thanks for sharing! As far as encouraging people to go in the winter, if that relieves some crowding in the summer, I'm all for it! Let's spread the 4 million people over 12 months instead of 4. The biggest effect of crowds isn't on park resources, it's on other peoples park experience. As an ecologist, surely you know that the park doesn't "catch a breath" during slow winter times!
Hey, YosemiteSteve - thanks for dropping by this blog. And for making the video in the first place! (and sorry I didn't notice your comment until today, so I hope you will drop by again to carry on the conversation)
I guess I was taking a bit of poetic (or should it be blogoeic?) license when I said "take a breath"! However, I have to wonder: are the 4 million actually going to be spread out over 12 months, or are you more likely to get even more people in other seasons, with the summer crowds staying the same? And as an ecologist, I also wonder if the relative impacts of tourists might not be worse during winter than summer. Are understory plants, for example, more or less likely to be damaged from trampling in winter than summer? How about impact on soil and rocks - is it likely to vary seasonally? I should think so, but I have no idea what the literature on this is!
What's your impression of the resilience of these landscapes in the different seasons?
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