Ah, Wilderness! Reservations Needed Even in Remote Northwest

These sparkling alpine lakes live up to their name. Hikers often say they half expect to see an elf behind the next granite boulder or a gnome crouched under a lakeside larch.

Wilderness ranger Elizabeth Goulet knows better. There is more likely to be another hiker behind that boulder, she says, and pile of trash under the tree.

At the moment she’s inspecting one careless camper’s jetsam: 10 wrappers from freeze-dried meals, a penlight battery, a jar of instant coffee, an empty sardine can, a stove burner and a tube of bug repellent.

Usually Goulet would be fuming, but today she’s all smiles. The litterer also left an envelope with his name on it, so a Mr. Martinez soon will be getting a package in the mail--his own trash, sent C.O.D.

One Small Victory

Rangers here in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness of the Cascade Range savor such small triumphs as they try to keep visitors from loving the wilderness to death. Few are as inconsiderate as Martinez, but sheer numbers take their toll.

“It’s becoming almost what we call urban wilderness,” Goulet said. “We manage it so much for people that we sometimes lose sight of managing it for its wilderness value.”

The U.S. Forest Service has resorted to a permit system here to limit the number of campers in the Enchantments.

It’s part of a trend. National parks, which are managed for the benefit of visitors, have struggled for years with the balance between letting sightseers in and maintaining a place worth seeing. Wilderness areas, which have less human traffic and are managed less intensively, are catching up fast.

A Colorado State University survey found that 28% of the 474 U.S. wilderness areas already limit recreational use via entry permits or time limits on camping, and others are considering such moves. Recreational use was declining at only 3% of the wilderness areas.

In Washington, the growing Seattle area promises more pressure on the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, which already sees more visitors annually than Mt. Rainier National Park.

“We have a very high outdoor ethic,” Ron DeHart of the Forest Service in Seattle said. “People want to do more than look at the mountains. They want to get out in them.”

Many choose to do it at Enchantment Lakes, a small corner of the 306,000-acre Alpine Lakes Wilderness where a dozen crystal-clear lakes adorn a basin of glacier-scoured granite, all hemmed in by jagged peaks. In the basin’s lower reaches are trees gnarled by the elements, meadows of heather and tarns with names like Talisman and Leprechaun. The upper basin is a haunting landscape of rock and snow.

No one knows the area better than Bill Stark, 78, and his wife, Peggy, 72. They named many of the lakes and have come here every year since 1959 from their home in nearby Leavenworth.

“When we first went up, it looked like nobody had ever been there,” Bill Stark said. “Then we started seeing subtle signs of use. Then, not-so-subtle signs.”

Hikers tramped out a network of foot trails across the basin. Lush beds of heather were flattened and wads of toilet paper blossomed everywhere. “People are pigs,” Stark said.

By the late 1970s, a summer weekend could bring as many as 300 people into the basin, a less-than-enchanting situation for everyone.

The Forest Service tried to minimize damage. Toilets were installed in 1966 and use of horses was restricted in 1972. Guided tours were banned in 1976 and dogs, which might chase wild animals or disturb other campers, were prohibited in 1982.

Booked Solid

A permit system established in 1987 limits the number of campers to about 60 on any given day. The season runs from June 15 to Oct. 15, and summer weekends are booked solid within a few weeks after permit applications are accepted March 1.

The permits detract from one value of having a wilderness: the opportunity to escape the regimentation of everyday life.

“Wilderness implies freedom, and you can’t get that freedom with the permit system,” Goulet conceded. “But you couldn’t get it here anyway, because without the permits, there would be crowds of people.”

A few campers each week sneak in without permits, risking $50 citations from one of the five rangers who patrol the Enchantments, but most visitors seem to respect the aim of the permit system.

“This is a really special place. Whatever it takes to keep it special is worth it,” said hiker Hal Zimmer, 39, who was on his seventh trip to the Enchantments.

Jeff Merkel of Philadelphia said his partner waited in line two hours at the Leavenworth ranger station to get one of the few permits reserved for “walk-in” business.

But Merkel doesn’t mind, considering the alternative: “There would be people all around the place. You might as well be at the Jersey shore.”

The permit system is working, Goulet said. The crowds are gone, so rangers have a chance to start replanting some eroded, overused campsites.

It is still not Goulet’s idea of true wilderness.

“The ultimate wilderness would be taking an unaffected area and blocking it off to everybody,” she said. “I wouldn’t have to go see it--just knowing it was there would be enough, knowing that there was an area we haven’t messed up.”

But there is also value to an “urban wilderness” like the Enchanted Lakes, she said, “a place where people can sense what the land was like before we got here.”