When Tourism Hits Home
Travelers often lament the negative impact of tourism on pristine natural environments such as the Galapagos or Antarctica. Similarly, residents of big cities and other heavily traveled sites often have a hard time during tourist season. But for me, living in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, it was only a recent incident that made the impact of irresponsible tourism hit home for me.
Growing up, I spent many weekends in the Laurel Mountains southeast Pittsburgh where my parents have a weekend home. Our place is only about a mile or two outside the beautiful Ohiopyle State Park, which features whitewater rafting, hiking, and biking. Some of my favorite memories as a kid were of hiking through the mountain trails and riding bikes through the state park.
I especially enjoyed a hike we often chose: the Meadow Run trail. This trail begins on top of a hill and winds through deciduous forest where chipmunks scurry about on the rocky forest floor and the sun shines through the canopy of poplar leaves in narrow beams. As the trail begins to descend into the valley, the poplars give way to rhododendrons and hemlocks and the path winds along walls of rock covered in moss.
Hikers reach Meadow Run soon after. This pristine mountain stream undergoes a dramatic change in elevation through the deep gorge traversed by the hiking trail. Points where the trail bring the hiker to the water are very diverse: from dramatic cascading waterfalls to deep swimming holes. As a kid, often in the company of friends or cousins, this was my favorite part. We could spend all afternoon swimming around in the creek, sliding down rocks, jumping in to swimming holes, and trying to avoid seeing giant fishing spiders.
Probably the best part of the hike was reaching the grand finale. The trail ends at a point in the stream where the rushing water has carved out a deep trench in the rock, creating a natural waterslide. Sliding down the rocks on your butt through the rushing water is a blast, and a really unique adventure! The “slides” are a lot of fun, but it’s important to be careful and respect the fast-moving water and keep your wits about you. There are no safety installations or lifeguards at this natural attraction.
A few weeks ago, I did the hike again with my mom and a friend. Over the years there has been quite a bit of investment in Ohiopyle State Park, including rebuilding an old railroad bridge on the bicycle trail, converting the train station into a visitor’s center, and adding a large parking lot and stairs leading to the slides. Basically what this has done is allow visitors to the park to avoid to 2 hour hike it usually takes to get to this area, and just spend the day at the slides. We figured it would be more crowded at the end of the trail due to this but we decided to do the hike anyway.
We had a great time on the hike and actually did a lot of swimming and sliding upstream of the slides area. There were hardly any people and we mostly had the trail to ourselves as we hiked. We spent a couple hours swimming and decided to head down to the slides, cautious because the water was pretty high and swift that day.
Approaching the slides was a complete 180 from our peaceful hike on the trail. We could hear people yelling and every creekside rock was covered with people life a crowded beach. It seemed like the easy access had invited swarms of people to descend on to this pristine area.
But for me, the worst part was a group of obnoxious college aged kids that had taken over a large area at the entry point to the slides. They were totally drunk and actually had coolers of beer and flaunted their open cans – completely illegal in the state park. They were running around like idiots, falling all over the place and sliding around completely recklessly. We actually saw a guy pick up one of the girls (kicking and screaming) run across the slippery rocks, and toss her into the rushing water, beer and all.
As annoying as this kind of ridiculous behavior is anywhere, it was especially disgusting to see their utter lack of regard for the natural environment and even more so the lack of respect for the dangerous conditions. The water in the slides was very high and fast – I have done it hundreds of times but would not have attempted it that day. You could tell they were getting very banged up by the rocks, but I believe someone could have easily gotten hurt or even drowned in those conditions.
That’s another reason I find this kind of behavior disgusting. People often do drown in Ohiopyle, usually while whitewater rafting despite taking the necessary precautions. A drowning in Meadow Run due to blatant irresponsibility would surely result in more limitations to visit this area and perhaps safety installations interfering with the natural beauty.
This uncalled for behavior left a really bad taste in my mouth. We left the area shortly thereafter and even attempted to call the game commission on the group, if only for their own safety. It’s sad that these efforts to make this naturally beautiful area more accessible to the public has resulted in such abuse of the privilege.
I’m not sure exactly what the moral of the story is here, but I know I will continue to be more conscious of how my travel behavior may impact the locals who’ve made it possible for me to visit a place.