What Makes a Wilderness Experience? Hikers' Photographs From Rocky Mountain National Park

Volunteers handed hikers at trailheads a survey, a camera and a journal. NPS-RMNP.

Ninety-five percent of Rocky Mountain National Park is backcountry. Of it, 3,000 acres are designated wilderness, and two hundred fifty thousand more are managed as wilderness in practice, pending a final legislative decision. As more people use these areas every year, the park's managers want decisions that give everyone the best possible wilderness experience, and for that they need to know what visitors come looking for.

The study

In the summer of 2002, members of the Political Analysis and Science Assistance Program, the Fort Collins Science Center and the U.S. Geological Survey, with park staff, park volunteers and Colorado State University's Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism program, set out to learn how many people use the backcountry, what affects their experience of wilderness, and what they hope to find there.

• They gave 293 single-use cameras to hikers at trailheads across the park.
• Each hiker recorded details of every photograph, including what sounds they heard at the time.
• Once the pictures were developed, each hiker got a copy and a second survey.
• The team analysed all the surveys and photographs together.

What they found

Sights and sounds improved the experience when they reflected wilderness or the effort to preserve it, and spoiled it when they reflected everyday life or the destruction of wilderness.

• Sights. Natural features appeared in 80 percent of the 2,930 photographs; the favourite subjects were running water, trees, mountains, glaciers and scenic views. Ninety-three percent of the natural subjects had a positive effect. Human-made things were welcome when they helped people reach or enjoy the wilderness, and unwelcome when they suggested its degradation or got in the way of the experience.
• Sounds. Seventy-seven percent of the sounds reported were natural. Birds and water were the most welcome; mobile phones and aircraft the most unpleasant. Voices were acceptable unless they suggested an area was crowded, and machine noise in general felt out of place.
• What people value. The qualities of wilderness named most often were its beauty, physical escape and solitude.

Sources

• National Park Service, Rocky Mountain National Park, "Factors Affecting the Wilderness Experience," updated January 2008. https://www.nps.gov/articles/factors-affecting-the-wilderness-experience.htm. The summary draws on published, peer-reviewed and unpublished reports; it is not a statement of park policy or a definitive account of the research.
• Corrected: "wildernss" to "wilderness".