Popular trails have seen an exponential rise in visitors over the past 20 years.

A roadside parking ban in the High Peaks region highlights lack of infrastructure.

A $400 million investment may be a hopeful sign the state's ready to address over-use problems.

Still, at its current rate, trail rehab would take 175 years to complete.

NORTH ELBA - Hikers packed the lots at popular trail heads up and down New York State Route 73 before sunrise on an early August weekend, partly thanks to a roadside parking ban enacted in the spring amid safety concerns.

The scene was indicative of a growing problem in the Adirondacks.

A sweeping management plan created by the state Department of Environmental Conservation two decades ago might have headed off parking woes, but locals say little of the plan was ever implemented, nor were other measures that could have helped mitigate overcrowding at one of the Northeast's most popular hiking destinations.

After years of visitors flocking to the Adirondack Park — one popular destination, for example, had a 700% increase over 20 years, according to state and local data — that lack of a plan to manage the sheer number of hikers in the backcountry has taken its toll.

Everybody wants to go to the High Peaks

Headlights emerge from the dark as a car pulls into one of the last parking spaces at the Adirondak Loj, about 15 minutes from Lake Placid.

A couple gets out, pops the tailgate and a yellow Labrador retriever spills out furiously wagging its tail. The two pull on their packs, leash the dog and head to the Van Hoevenberg Trail Head at the back of the lot.

They sign the log book at 4:45 a.m. and march into the woods bound for Tabletop Mountain, with beams of light from their headlamps bobbing through the trees.

It's a common scene at trail heads throughout the High Peaks Wilderness in the Adirondack Park where hikers gather by the thousands each weekend.

Just after sunrise, hikers were already on Algonquin's 5,115-foot peak. Taking in views of Mount Marcy, Colden, Wright, Iroquois Peak and more, one quickly understands why this part of the Adirondacks attracts so many visitors.

Michaela Dunn, a summit steward tasked with helping visitors, was already on the peak keeping a careful lookout for hikers.

Despite clouds rolling over the top, spitting rain and steady wind chill gusts that felt like 36 degrees, hikers were coming by the dozens. Dunn strikes up conversations with them, pointing out the fragile Alpine plants.

She preached, among other things, a leave-no-trace basic principle: Step only on the rock. Not the plants or grasses. Not even on the gravel, made of mineral deposits that are crucial for new plant growth.

The steward program's 30-year legacy is one of success, helping to save plant species on the brink of being erased from mountaintops across the Adirondacks a few decades ago.

But while summit stewards watch over the peaks, the trails below are taking a beating.

Standing at the bottom of a long, steep slab of wet rock on the Algonquin Trail, Kayla White, a summit steward trail coordinator, watched one hiker inch down on their backside, grabbing tree branches.

"When they are not feeling safe, what they end up doing is going into the woods" or they pull down branches at the trail's edge, she explained.

Further down, she pointed out an undesignated trail — known as a herd path — where hikers went into the woods to bypass a hard spot. She stood by a pile of logs and branches that stewards placed to stop hikers using it. But with so many people on the trail, stewards can't watch them all.

With more stewards, they could educate their way out of a lot of this kind of damage just like they did in the Alpine zone, she said.

While a plan collected dust, the mountains eroded

One challenge to managing the Adirondack Park is its size and the park's patchwork of public and private lands.

It's huge, the largest in the contiguous U.S. — bigger than Yellowstone and roughly the same size as neighboring Vermont. All the more reason for a plan, advocates say.

"The best plan is from 20 years ago and still hasn't been implemented," said William Janeway, executive director of the nonprofit Adirondack Council. Despite a handful of targeted actions in recent years, the state has failed to implement a comprehensive plan to manage use, he said.

And that frustrates a lot of people around the park, such as Keene Valley Town Supervisor Joe Pete Wilson Jr.

Although the communities around the Adirondacks benefit from the tourism — nearly a million visitors generated just under $260 million in revenue in 2018 for the High Peaks region alone, according to the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism — the mountains do not.

"People aren't going to come if the trails are trashed and the woods are full of poop," Wilson said.

Keene Valley is on the front lines with several trail heads to the High Peaks within its borders.

Wilson said they have been trying to balance tourism and preserving the character of the Adirondacks as well as keeping local residents from being inconvenienced. After the roadside parking ban started in May, Wilson nearly came to blows with Canadian tourists during an argument over where to park.

"It's getting to be ridiculous," said George Daniels, who owns Keene Valley Lodge with his wife, Linda.

"The reason people come here to hike is to get away from it all, and now you're in it. You can't find a parking space, the trails are overrun."

Daniels worries that the Adirondacks will lose their character if something isn't done soon.

Even if the 1999 plan had been implemented, DEC Regional Director Bob Stegemann said it wouldn't be adequate now anyway.

Why?

Since High Peaks Unit Management Plan was created, visits have increased dramatically.

In 2000, the Cascade Trail registered less than 5,000 hikers. By 2016, that number skyrocketed to nearly 35,000, according to Adirondack Council data.

Stegemann sees an opportunity to create a more modern plan, although he admits that plan is still years away.

How consensus may be the secret to keeping the Adirondacks wild

There have been lots of meetings between state and local stakeholders over the years, but Janeway thinks a meeting in July was different. There was strong consensus about what needs to happen.

And that's new.

According to an Adirondack Council news release, that July meeting produced three priorities:

The need for a comprehensive plan

Better funding

A pilot program for hiking permits

There has also been recent investment from the state.

Janeway said New York has spent more than $400 million on capital projects as well as massive land acquisitions.

“The facts are clear: Governor Cuomo has invested billions of dollars in the Adirondack Park to support its communities and make the park an international, sustainable tourist destination, preserving it for future generations," a spokesperson for Gov. Andrew Cuomo stated.

They noted that the governor has done the following:

added 161,000 acres of parkland — the park’s largest expansion in more than a century

updated to facilities and built new ones

improved water infrastructure

and restored trails.

But Janeway noted that little has been spent on developing and implementing a management plan.

"That's nowhere near as expensive as the other investments that have been made," he said, adding that the frustration many feel is that, if there is so much money for those projects, why isn't there an additional $5 million to create a plan.

"There are a lot of people calling for that," he said.

But some of the work to manage use has already begun, Stegemann said. Partnerships with organizations like the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism are helping to steer tourists to underused parts of the park.

"This is a nice problem to have," said Stegemann of the challenges ahead. "We have a lot of people interested in coming here and we welcome that."

Trail crews face hundreds of miles of damage repair

Even if a comprehensive plan started tomorrow, the damage has been done, said Peter Bauer, who leads a grassroots conservation group.

"What the High Peaks unfortunately suffers from is a chronic lack of investment," said the Protect the Adirondacks executive director, adding that years of neglect by previous administrations and even current Gov. Andrew Cuomo have perpetuated a legacy of disrepair.

There are 200 miles of trails in the High Peaks that need to be closed and rerouted with new trail built to modern standards, he said.

Another 150 miles of new trail needs to be built for peaks that have none at all, but are hiked anyway. Bauer said those areas are riddled with herd paths, some 30 feet wide in places.

The DEC fixes about 2 miles of trail a year, he said.

At that pace, it would take 175 years to fix existing damage. Others are pitching in, groups such as the Adirondack Mountain Club, the Adirondack 46ers, and the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society, but Bauer said it's not enough.

He wants 25 miles of trail reconstruction a year.

He wants more seasonal workers and front country stewards educating hikers in leave no trace before they even get into the woods.

He wants to see more forest rangers on the trails instead of enforcing the roadside parking ban, something that — if parking lots proposed years ago had actually been built — wouldn't even be necessary.

The leadership needed to make that happen needs to come straight from the top and it needs to happen now, Bauer said.

"The governor has shown that he when he wants to make big things happen, he can do it," Bauer said.

Contact Ryan Mercer at rmercer@freepressmedia.com or at 802-343-4169. Follow him on Twitter @ryanmercer1 and facebook.com/ryan.mercer1.