There and Back Again: how in-destination transportation pulls them in and brings them back

Photo by Des Récits

Yosemite National Park’s Mirror Lake isn’t actually a lake; it’s merely a wide, slow-moving section of Tenaya Creek, which eventually feeds into the park’s central aquatic artery, the Merced River. It’s so named because when the timing is right, the surrounding granite, including the famed Half Dome, can be seen in its stoic surface.

Of course, its true definition has no bearing on Mirror Lake’s popularity. Before the summer sun sears off the snowmelt and California’s now-persistent drought turns its deep ends into shallow ends, Mirror Lake’s sandy shoreline is a busy place, full of the park’s pedestrian adventurers. Families with infant totes, day-trippers, and Instagrammers picnic on its granitic sand and rest in hammocks under shady alcoves. 

Yet, what makes Mirror Lake unique in the Yosemite Valley is the fact that it’s paved access, a little over a mile from the Valley’s core,  is closed to all cars but those with disability placards. The lack of motor vehicles has made the lake an ideal destination for visitors who take advantage of Yosemite’s free, app-based bike share initiative, which is supported by the park’s primary non-profit partner, the Yosemite Conservancy. In fact, biking has become so popular that the area’s boulders and black oaks become de-facto bike racks after the actual ones fill, usually well before noon. When the free bikes get spoken for, Yosemite Hospitality’s fee-based, all-day rental service back-fills the need. 

The park’s work to reduce traffic in the Valley, which also includes its peak season reservation system to address the larger issue of chronic overtourism, is only one part of a decades-long, multi-park effort to hamper our dependence on personal automobiles within our most in-need and cherished natural areas. And it has had far reaching effects: fewer cars means fewer animal-car collisions, improved air quality, more ‘wild’ spaces, and diminished noise and environmental pollution. Not only that, but those who do decide to enter the Valley  in cars are also more exposed to the use of in-park micro-transit options and more sustainable ways to travel in environmentally sensitive areas. 

Photo by Nathan Dumlao

In 2022, the Yosemite Conservancy is hoping to take these sustainability initiatives a step further by hiring a specialist in public infrastructure planning and large-scale cycling travel installations to expand the Valley’s ability to accommodate those who prefer to pedal through the park. 

However, the adoption of such an effort runs contrary to the park system’s history, as its success was intricately linked to the romanticism of the American highway system and the lore of the locomotive. 

While chugging steam trains have mostly lost their presence in the parks, separating American tourism from its fossil fuel habit is a Redwood-tall order. Doing so will take more than pushing bike use and park transit. It’s going to take public-private partnerships, marketing resources from the private sector, and enterprises that rely on park-adjacency to drive business. 

And thankfully, in some places, such efforts are already underway.

Photo by Joe Eitzen

Partnership Makes Progress

It’s no secret that destination management organizations, tourism advocates, and local, adventure-minded businesses are ideally situated to augment the government’s efforts by promoting the value of community-wide sustainability programs.

The town of Springdale, UT, at the west gate of Zion National Park, is forever linked to its red rock-enshrined neighbor. Park shuttle stops dot the town, strategically positioned near lodging and popular eateries thanks to a joint initiative to push park buses into the town’s commercial corridor. 

Connecting the two entities further is the Zion National Park Forever program, a joint non-profit initiative between the park and local commercial stakeholders. The organization is conceptually almost a 100-years-old, working mainly in the oversight of park retail operations. Zion’s recent surge in popularity reinvigorated those behind the program. A five-year strategic plan was unveiled in 2019, heavily involving private entities in its “gateway communities” at each end of the park.

Among a number of other sustainable initiatives, the Zion Forever Project is fundraising for an extension of an existing, paved multi-use trail along the 8-mile Zion Canyon Scenic Drive, citing the increased use of bicycles in the park. The trail would lead to the park’s most visited trailheads, offering access by bicycle, and foot, to Angel’s Landing and the in-river walk through the Narrows. 

In the fall of 2021, ten miles of the new East Zion Bike Trail was opened as part of the Zion Forever collaboration, promoting single-track mountain biking along the park’s borders. Another 14 miles is expected to be completed by spring 2023. 

A goal of the trail’s development is to move guests from the highly popular valley floor to a peripheral area, reducing congestion and promoting less impacted places. It also offers DMOs, tourism promoters, and other travel service providers a wide range of new partnership opportunities surrounding outdoor recreation and unique ways for their audience to experience the park. 

These sorts of public-private partnerships can be replicated in other outdoor recreation-minded destinations, such as Sedona, AZ, a national park-esque destination that recently required new approaches to addressing visitor impact. In partnership with GLP Films, it subsequently launched a three-part, video-based marketing campaign to mix sustainable travel messages with smart tourism outreach.

In 2021, a similar marketing effort was launched in the bi-state recreation destination of Lake Tahoe. 

Go Tahoe North, the joint, public facing travel and tourism information hub for Travel North Tahoe Nevada and North Lake Tahoe Resort Association, put significant resources behind the Responsible Traveler Pledge, a statewide outreach initiative to educate visitors and address over-tourism on the region’s national park-like surroundings and it’s highly sensitive namesake body of water.

The program was divided by areas of emphasis, such as wildfire prevention and wildlife education, and marketed through a series of videos with local stakeholders, ranging from noteworthy mountain guides and former Olympians to local fire chiefs and environmental leaders. 

Photo by Johannes Andersson

Help Remains Essential

The National Park Service studied park-provided transit in 2018, finding that shuttle services and alternatives to visitor automobiles resulted in the elimination of an estimated 16.7 million passenger vehicle trips, which would have covered 223 million miles producing more than 123 million metric tons of CO2.

It also implemented the Climate Friendly Parks (CFP) initiative, which encourages individual park leaders to strive for a series of sustainability benchmarks under the more sweeping Green Parks Plan. Close to 100 parks have achieved CFP designation. 

These are the types of facts and programs that can fuel sustainability-forward travel promotion, which continues to pay dividends for DMOs, tourism operators, and adventure travel providers. But the industry shouldn’t rely on the land agencies alone to deliver the message. The Department of the Interior, for example, is a massive federal agency, and the Park Service under it remains tragically underfunded, despite the passing of the Great American Outdoors Act and new resources available under the Inflation Reduction Act.  

To continue the critical effort of educating the public on the benefits of mass transit to, and within, our national parks, the risk of over-tourism, and the impact of the increasingly adventure-minded traveler, the people behind America’s Greatest Idea are going to need some help. 

So much depends on it.

About GLP Films

GLP Films (GLP) is an award-winning, full-service content marketing agency that empowers brands to accelerate growth, positive impact, and sustainability through strategic storytelling. Since 2008 GLP has been telling local stories globally through beautifully crafted video, engaging content and communications campaigns, and a people-first approach. 

Want to inspire, create change, and embrace sustainability through storytelling? Send us a note at team@glpfilms.com and check out our work at glpfilms.com.