The Debate - link to the Adirondack Explorer

Here is the actual debate that occured in the Adirondack Explorer and posted here with the permission of the Editor.
Thanks to Dave for hosting this on his site.

http://www.hikethewhites.com/vftt/54_Debate.pdf

Thanks to both of you for making the article available to more people.

Regardless of which side of the issue you're on (or neither), I think James Close has his facts wrong in terms of numbers of hikers. From what I've read recently, the number of visitors (and hikers are visitors) has dropped off in the past few years to both national parks and national forests. IRRC, there was a thread here in the last year or so speculating on why Baxter's numbers are down.

After reading the actual debate I think both sides are right and those who objected to name-calling are being particularly thin-skinned.

Surely some herd paths will develop particularly along obvious routes and near the summits, but this will have negligible effect on the ecology of the Park as a whole.

I have read only a few pages of the book but from what I have seen the author is not hyping the advantages of these hikes, in fact some of his descriptions might be considered discouraging to most folks. If you truly want to reduce human impact on the Adk, it would be better to ban some of the tourist-type publications that lure masses up popular trails.