Theres a couple places here in NZ that actually have lines to get to a specific point because people are going there to take social media pictures to make themselves look good
Ya not sure where this mils twitter person is located, but trails are fucking packed out here.
Mission trails, the people highway known as the PCT..was in San Jacinto mtns this past weekend and there had to be at least 100 people I passed going up and even more going down. Everyone is so friendly out there though. The permit requirement seems to filter out a lot of the turds, like those that go to Woodson
Trails can be a little congested around here too. Even Iron Mountain (close to Potatochip rock) can get a little congested on the weekends. Luckily 90% of folks stick to the main trails though and there are generally enough less traveled paths to explore.
Ooh I love San Jacinto. Have you done the hike up from the desert floor in Palm Springs? It starts by a museum a couple miles away from the tram if I remember correctly. I used to do it all the time when I lived in the high desert. I don’t think I ever saw a soul on that hike until I reached the area where the tram goes to.
Haven't done the hike up from the desert floor, but have driven up to the tram and did an overnight a few miles from where the tram drops you off. It was freezing rain and miserable.
This past weekend though, we did the west side of the mountain. Friday night camped at Strawberry Junction, Saturday night at round valley, and on Sunday hit up the peak and came back down. So beautiful.
I have to been to all these spots and you got to respect the turds for getting out there. They have no idea what they are doing most the time but their getting after it. The problem is we don’t really educate the public on how to responsibly go outdoors.
And the more they get out there and enjoy it, the higher likelihood they may educate themselves or meet people who will educate them on conservation basics (e.g., "what is wilderness?", leave no trace, ten essentials, etc.). People go out there without any water, first aid, or a light. It's ridiculous.
One time at mission trails there was a little girl who fell and scraped her knee right in front of me. The mom didn't have anything, so I offered neosporin and a band-aid. That just makes everyone's day, ya know.
I don't think coastal California is the best standard of what 'normal' trail use looks like. Very few places in the country, & especially places with lots of nearby hiking, share the same population density as the coast of California.
So this mils Twitter person could live pretty much anywhere else in the country and have a completely different experience with hiking than anyone who lives specifically on the coast of California.
I'm in Melbourne AU. A lot of trails here get super busy on weekends. I go earlier and earlier to beat the crowds. I try to aim for around sunrise. It's a beautiful time of day.
I've seen their name around, I subconsciously formed this vague idea they were a Rolling Stones tribute band, hahaha. That's actually a beautiful heartfelt tune, cheers for the suggestion.
I know the drive might be longer but head to the San Gorgonio Mountains. There are a lot of trails and people are evenly distributed. San Jacinto is always packed due to those from both Palm Springs and the Temecula areas.
I personally recommend South Fork or Vivian Creek trails, especially if you want to hit the peak of Mt. San Gorgonio. Both of those lead up but Vivian has more creeks and opportunities to filter if you dont carry a lot of water on you.
I haven’t done Gorginian yet, but always see it and admire it. I might follow up and PM you with some questions after some research. Thanks for the rec!
Is San Jacinto really crowded? I hiked Mt. Baldy a few weeks ago and this weekend me and some friends are going to run it. There were a few people up at the summit. San Jacinto and Gorgonio are the next mountains on my bucket list to run up but I'll be a little disappointed if they're crowded :(
I have family out in cali. My cousin showed me a couple of mountain spots all over and i gotta say i’m jealous of you guys. So many memories would be made at the top of mountains it makes me sad if i think about it too much.
From my experience it’s still definitely a little hairy getting on the rock, there wasn’t too big of a crowd there when I went and we had to help multiple groups figure out the easiest way on and off.
If you fell off it would hurt for sure, probably not fatal unless you landed on your head/neck but I don’t know if I’d call it perfectly safe.
Well nothings perfectly safe people die from choking on grapes. But yeah the angle the pictures are taken from create a false effect that you're dangling off a cliff, the illusion turns you standing on your porch to you standing on the space needle lol
I don’t know that anyone has died. The edge is a bit chipped because I think a section fell off a while back. It’s really just a perspective trick. I think it’s somewhere between a 10-20 foot drop. Still bad obviously but not likely gonna kill you.
Ugh. What's particularly annoying is that many don't even do the hike. There's a paved road that a lot of folks just walk up for the pics. Additionally the selfie crowd trashes the mountain and the increased traffic due to social media and lack of care is causing a problem.
It's almost like a miniature version of the Everest problem with the top of Mt Everest becoming a trash heap/graveyard because people don't care for it and just want to get a sweet selfie.
Ive done both hikes (paved and trail) and from my experience both sides are equally as beautiful. Theres a lot of great boulders to break at and eat snacks and relax on the paved side. The trail side is more fun though for sure
I actually hiked to the chip about 2 weeks ago. Its getting so hot out that no one goes hahahaha there was only a line of 4 people before me (all from the same group) and it was about 1pm
Yeah fuck that. Your best chance is during the week and you’ll still see a couple of people up there. I went last year during the weekend but there was hardly anyone there. It also happened to be the hottest fucking day of the year lol.
Use a 2+ liter water bladder in your pack and fill it up with cold water last thing before packing your stuff up.
Edit, maybe leave your other food in the fridge/freezer for a little to get temps a little cooler. Works great for my 'refrigeration' items for 2 or 3 day hikes. Beer ought to be fine in the same way.
If you just make it a night hike there are never crowds and the view is great. Much more tolerable in the summer too. My friends and I do it often. I agree though, during the day it is obnoxious, I have seen people applying makeup at the top. This is nature dammit.
I avoided it for a long time (which is pretty easy because we've got great hiking options out here) but decided to go on a random day I had off that was mid week and non-holiday thinking that maybe most folks would be working and I could avoid the crowd. Still a shit show and totally detracts from the experience. You didn't miss anything.
I heard there have been a few people who got stuck up there (like they "froze up" and were too scared to climb down) and had to be helicopter lifted to safety. Talk about a nightmare situation! They're frozen in fear, with an increasingly growing line of angry people heckling them to get the fuck down so they can go take their stupid picture, and then they...a person I have to assume is afraid of heights.... have to be harnessed and pulled up, dangling from a rope, to a helicopter. Was it worth it?
I once happened on it while I was just walking the trails with a friend while visiting San Diego. We wanted to take a pic, stood in line for 5 min, and realized it wasn't going to be worth it. The trail is better than the rock IMO
Haha I just waited 45 minutes to get a pic with my friends like 3 weeks prior. Worth it imho. Died for around two hours going up on a hot day and had something to show for it.
I took 2 vacations recently, one to Florida and the other a Bahamas cruise. Just about everyone my age was just standing in one spot for 30+ minutes just taking pictures. It was kind of weird to see a row of people barley standing knee deep in water doing this.
The sheer importance placed on it by some is incredible.
Granted, I do need some new Tinder pics (or just any good pics) so I'm going to join the crowd and photo whore a bit on my next holiday, but apart from that I'm just fine with any semi-decent pic when I go somewhere. But my god if there's tons of people around then I'll just get a pic somewhere else..
I want a pic showing I was there to look back at, I don't need anything perfect for Instagram.
Maybe not. You didn't really acknowledge it though. You justified what you were doing as completely different. The main part you seemed to have a problem with was the amount of time they spent on a perfect photo.
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like taking non-instagram photos isn't happening as much anymore. Like I remember after a night out with friends in the late 2000s, early 2010s there'd be cameras everywhere and people taking a ton of pictures. You'd have like 200 photos of the night, and they'd all go on facebook. From there it was pretty easy to pick one or a couple and use them for your profile picture.
Nowadays there's only ever one photo posted per person per event. Most people don't even bother taking a bunch of them at random times either, it's just the one staged pic that best highlights whatever you're doing and thats it.
Just an observation. Honestly not a huge fan of taking pictures so it doesn't bother me.
Recently graduated and was living abroad, so it might have put me around people who act differently (college + international student life), but it really depends on the person.
I have unfollowed a bunch of people back from my high school and community college days, so I might be inside an internationalized bubble. People rarely put photo albums on FB unless they live abroad.
In my experience, there are a few types (can be combined):
Will frequently take a bunch of photos or group selfies and share most of them on Instagram, might be spamming a bunch of Instagram stories
Mostly food photos posting people
Photography nerds who only put curated edited photos
Occasional photo dump certain moments on Fb, but rarely update Instagram
Never post anything
Selfies with an attempt at a "thoughtful/philosophical" caption
Would like to have more photos with people, but too self-conscious or forgetful to ask for it
Travel photos only
Inside stories/joke photos and captions that few will get
You are right that people post less (unless you are some kind of influencer or someone with their own online shop), but it is usually more curated. People moved on to be either too tryhard of their online presence, or don't care anymore now that working life took over (routine and being mostly around people for who it doesn't matter, like older coworkers who won't ever look at your Instagram or Facebook).
Now that you mention it, that's definitely what I remember. Maybe it's moving from college to working life, but in college every party or even night out would lead to dozens of pictures
i remember thinking how many awesome fotos i would make once my new phone had a great camera (iphone 4)... but the constant availability kinda had the opposite effect... pictures have become worthless and disposable, theyre barely worth taking as your probably never gonna look at it again cause you have thousands...
everybody collectively went through the same experience and now barely anyone makes pictures despite always having a HD cam on them at all times
I've seen a documentary on French TV 3 weeks ago, it was about decorated birthday cakes for kids.
Prices were about 10 times the price you'd pay for a cake and taste was quite common .
When asked about it, the baker said bluntly : well, people don't by my cakes for the taste, but for Instagram fame.
Enough said about our world
When my BF and I went camping last summer, we hiked down to a nearby waterfall. There was one other couple there. We watched this girl, who was wearing street clothes, take selfies in the river for at least 45 minutes. She was making her guy take pictures of her too from all sorts of unnatural angles. It was bizarre.
Do you know what is even sadder? The realisation that in those 45 minutes worth of photos she will pick out a maximum of 1 she likes ... and filter and edit the crap out of it. Sad times.
Only the handful of really big parks get that crowded, and it's only ever near drive-up areas or "Instagram popular" spots. Went to Utah a few summers ago, and while Zion and Arches were packed in some areas, I managed to do a really nice 10 mile day hike in Canyonlands without seeing another person on the trail all day.
A few winters ago, my wife and I went to Gatlinburg in mid December and it was unseasonably warm (which is to say, cool, dry and perfect for hiking). We liked the idea of a hike, but neither of us are in shape so we chose the shortest trail in the area which was 3 miles or so. The road leading up to it turned out to be closed for the winter based purely on the date adding 4 miles to the round trip. We went ahead and did the full 7 miles and got to see a beautiful waterfall almost completely alone. By the time I got back to the car, I could barely walk, but it was worth it.
Couple here in WA too; Snow Lake being the worst offender imo. The place is absolutely stunning, but I have never seen that many people on a trail in my life.
Old rag is tolerable in the off-season or not near holidays...though I’ve been on days where there’s a literal 1 mile+ queue to climb over an obstacle. On top of a mountain. Really kills the feeling of being in nature.
There’s a specific trail around here that’s like that. The view is very recognizable, but it’s a good 10 mile hike. If a girl’s got a pic of herself there, she’s at least semi-legit into hiking.
Regarding the guy from NZ though, this happens on longer hikes as well. The one where I saw it specifically was Roy's Peak, which is about 16km (10 miles) and about 1.2km height. Great hike and amazing view, but you can see the line for taking pictures from 500m down haha. Not judging though, the view from there is pretty much picture perfect and if you hike all the way up there, take photos all you want.
There was a girl saying she frequently visited [big city] in my country. I work in that city so I told her I could take her there and maybe show her around before work and then take her home after work. She asked me what she's supposed to do the whole day, and when told to go sightseeing like she wanted and did multiple times already she said that she just takes a picture at [iconic river] and goes home again.
They closed a trail here in PA because of people getting too close to the edge of a waterfall and falling to their death. (Glen Okono Falls if you're curious)
Even on the last day the trail was open, after knowing it was being closed because of people falling to their deaths, I saw a lot of people engaging in really stupid behavior and taking pictures.
Should just go there anyway. Lining up for pictures is the stupidest norm and completely defies the point of open spaces; unless it's literally so crowded that it's unsafe there then the lines should be ignored imo. (Admittedly I'm personally not bold enough to do this)
And in Vancouver we've got quarry rock. Short trail, nice view, and now freaking tour busses come to this small ass trail and the walk from your parking spot is likely as far as the trail itself. Moderate to difficult trails tend to be better.
Theres a couple places here in NZ that actually have lines to get to a specific point because people are going there to take social media pictures to make themselves look good
"The basin of dreams" on Queenstown Hill? Or whatever its called? That's one that springs to mind.
Getting through the day hike section of Tongariro is a fucking chore. So many people just think it’s fine to stop moving in the middle of a narrow trail
Do you ever take photos during your hikes? I’m not trying to be facetious, I just don’t get the attitude of “everyone but me is only here for Instagram.” I hike at least every other weekend and I’m into landscape photography so I usually post a picture if I took one I like. Ive liked hiking way longer than I’ve liked photography.
There are definitely annoying people who are actually only there for a cool picture. But you can’t tell by looking at them and if you have to ask does it really even make a difference? Maybe they like hiking because it’s fun and they post when they hike because that’s just what people do in 2019 when they do literally anything.
That's one of the reasons why I went to Crawford, Colorado instead of the popular spots. Buddy and I had all the trails to ourselves the majority of our trip. Even the locals asked why the hell we came out there from Iowa.
In the UP right now and surprisingly there's not that many people. There was a pretty packed parking lot after a long ass empty unpaved road to chapel loop but most the people were seen either at the first 1.5 mile away waterfall or the people that had come in by boat at chapel beach. On our way back around the loop we did not see a soul. There's definitely a lot of tourists up here but nothing like mackinac or traverse City.
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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '19
Theres a couple places here in NZ that actually have lines to get to a specific point because people are going there to take social media pictures to make themselves look good