This image above is actually still from Lake Powell. I took it to try and capture how low the water has gotten. As you might be able to see, there is a line of camper vans up on the left, and if you continue that line all the way to the right, you get the the transition area in the big white rock on the right where the color turns from white to brown. That line is where the water level used to be. So I would be 30 feet under water taking this picture. And to get to the water you actually need to go down further.

Another image from Lake Powell, taken right as we woke up. It rained a bit at night, and there was an active wind, so some of the rain froze on top of our tent.

On the way to Zion National Park we passed by a ranch that raises buffalos. It is a pretty big beast, and not too long ago herds of buffalos that numbered in the hundreds of thousands were roaming freely. It is estimated that prior to 1800 there were around 60 million buffalos in north America. By 1900 there were 300. Not 300 million, just 300 individual animals. This is a staggering 5 orders of magnitude drop, and yet another example of how uncontrolled, short sighted profit and exploitation wrecks havoc on our world.

A different kind of mismanagement is evident in Zion National Park. It is one of the more popular national parks, with 5 million annual visitors according to the National Park Service. It is currently spring break, and many other people decided to do what we did and come enjoy this beautiful park. As you can see in the image above, it is crowded.

Zion was established as a national park in 1919, and developed in the following decades using, among others, the New Deal’s Civil Conservation Corps. The parking lots are very spacious in early 20th century terms, but today’s crowds completely overwhelm them. To deal with that, the park has a shuttle system that it operates during the most heavily visited times, but despite this week being a predictably heavy traffic week, the shuttles are not operating. The rangers say there is no budget for them, which to me seems just absurd. There are so many ways in which this is absurd, but I’ll just name a few.

First, tickets alone should provide a very large budget from which to draw on. With 5 million annual visitors, assuming they pay $10 each (the fee is $35 per car, most cars have 3-4 people, and this rough calculation does not include annual passes or motorcycles, which I don’t think change the general picture all that much), you get a $50 million annual budget. Assuming they get no funding from the federal government or any other entity, and assuming the shuttle needs to run 8 months per year, you get a $6.2 million monthly budget. This comes to $200K daily, and assuming 20 busses, this would be $10K a day to run each one of them. I am not trying to argue that Zion should run this number of busses or that this is what they should budget for them, just that the ballpark revenue they get from tickets alone should be sufficient to run the shuttles whenever they are needed. And the park certainly has other sources of income, e.g. from the federal budget, gift store, donations, tour operators, etc.

Additionally, even if somehow the budget is not sufficient, why not charge people some extra fee to board the bus? If that enabled them to see the beauty of Zion, everyone would surely be happy to pay a modest fee, and you can make getting a waiver due to economic hardship easy, so as to not disadvantage anyone that might struggle to pay. This is not rocket science. It is done by public transit systems the world over. Why not here?

There is no excuse for letting people come in to the park hoping to see its sights, and then saying to them they simply can’t get there because the shuttles are not running and there is not parking. It is just silly.

Having said all that, Zion is indeed beautiful. Though we didn’t get to do the famous Narrows, or climb up to Angle’s Landing, it is very pretty here. We managed to get in to the coveted canyon drive late in the day when traffic was not completely crazy, just heavy (and we used our Tel Aviv parking skills to find a spot to park). It got close to freezing last night, but during the day the temperatures are nice and warm. Our campground is comfortable and we did a nice little hike this morning.

And for another perspective on our trip, check out my wife Orit’s thoughts on it.

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