There are many beautiful natural sites, that draw large amounts of visitors. The more accessible they are the broader the range of people that come and visit. While it requires some navigation, I do believe that all people have the same right to access and as it gets managed by the park service, I am assuming that there is consideration as to the capacity. We just returned from a camping trip to the Banff National Park in Canada, and it is considered one of those places. The websites with the most desirable sites to visit are full of warnings about the lack of parking, the need to book shuttles and to be prepared for a wait to obtain access (or to go to the restroom!) or crowded trails. Examples of such places would be Lake Louise, Moraine Lake or Johnson Canyon. All of them offer a broad range of hiking opportunities – from a simple walk along the lake shore or to the first waterfall, to multi-mile hikes to mountain tops, more water falls or valleys high up surrounded by towering mountains. It is hard to categorize the visitors – my guess would be 10-20% just seek out the nearest photo opportunity and don’t walk for real, 40-60% do a hike – for example the lake shore walks, which are usually flat and reasonably well fortified. The remainder of the crowd seeks out more challenging hikes of variable length and difficulty. That is the category in which our family falls. These trails often overlap and it is not always immediately clear which category a hiker falls into – equipment like bear spray is not a reliable indicator, some people carry it even to the grocery store. But by observation I found an indicator with more predictive power – paper coffee cups! Not sure if it has to do with the ratio of the liquid volume and the distance traveled, or the fact that the easier trails allow for one hand to be devoted to the coffee since the trails are level. What I can say for sure is that after about a mile to mile and a half the coffee cups vanish and if people are holding something in their hands, then it is more likely a water bottle. So, it appears that for as long as one can see coffee cups in people’s hands one is not really hiking yet, after they vanish one has left the strolling perimeter of the parking area and has entered serious hiking terrain. Needless to say, that outside that perimeter one usually won’t find garbage receptacles either.