Resurrection, At A Price

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Mike Wurman photo

Resurrection, At A Price

The Covid-19 pandemic brought scores of campers to Max Patch, much to the detriment of the open bald on the Appalachian Trail.

When I moved to Western North Carolina in 2014, it wasn’t long before I heard about a spot called Max Patch—one of the best 360-degree views around, a grassy oasis amid a landscape of unbroken forest, the perfect place to picnic or camp out under the night sky.

A visit to Max Patch is like eating dessert before vegetables, I decided after making my first trip there that fall. You exit the car, walk half a mile or so, and cash in on the view. If you continue hiking, you’re in for a gorgeous section of the Appalachian Trail, but you won’t recapture the drama of Max Patch for many miles to come.

Little did I know that I was meeting Max Patch during a fleeting, intermediate era of its existence as a public land. Reached only via a potholed drive along unpaved Forest Service roads, the spot was well-known—especially among locals—but not yet tagged on the feed of seemingly half the world’s Instagram users. There were hikers and picnickers up there, but also space to spread out, both in the parking lot and atop the mountain.

By now it’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic brought with it an explosion of demand for outdoor recreation. Though the region’s trails and parks had been seeing heightened traffic for years prior to the era of social distancing and mask mandates, the trend accelerated as the pandemic unfolded. In the nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for instance, visitation for July 2020 came in 7 percent higher than the same month in 2019, and the gap only widened as the year wore on. November 2020 saw a 28.2 percent increase over November 2019.

Nevertheless, a drone photo that Asheville, North Carolina, artist Mike Wurman captured at Max Patch on Sept. 19, 2020, shocked the entire outdoor community. Taken as dusk fell over the mountains that Saturday, the photo showed about 130 tents covering the top of Max Patch, along with an abundance of picnic blankets and trash. Benny Braden, a social media influencer who promotes Leave No Trace principles, had camped out the previous night only to endure partying, loud music, and a trashed mountain the next morning. Together with a few friends, Braden picked up 82 gallons of garbage.

I wasn’t among the thousands who flocked to Max Patch in 2020, instead choosing to hike lesser-known trails as pandemic crowds persisted. I visited for the first time in over a year on Sept. 25, 2021, and the scene I found was completely different from either the one I’d first encountered there seven years prior, or the one I’d seen in Wurman’s viral photograph.

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Benny Braden photo

Resurrection, At A Price

The purity and wildness of Max Patch has been reclaimed from the clutches of party culture.

The open bald, flat and trampled in even my earliest memories of it, had transformed to a healthy meadow. Blooming goldenrod and aster dotted the view, and atop the bald, slope, shrubbery, and tall, waving grasses combined to create an illusion of deserted wilderness. Though it was a perfect, sunny Saturday, encounters with other hikers were an intermittent event, not a constant parade.

As I walked, the thud of sledgehammers and Pulaskis hitting earth, rock and wood traveled through the crisp autumn air. This particular Saturday was National Public Lands Day, and about 50 volunteers had converged on Max Patch to help rehabilitate the trail and protect it from misuse.

You see, the resurrection of Max Patch didn’t happen by accident. Wurman’s photo and the outcry that followed spurred the U.S. Forest Service to accelerate a process that had already been under way—analyzing the issues at Max Patch and finding a workable solution. In July 2021, the Forest Service issued a slate of new rules for the spot. Camping—or for that matter, any use between an hour after sunset and an hour before sunrise—would no longer be allowed on the bald, formerly a favorite overnight spot for starwatchers and A.T. thru-hikers hungry for a break from the deep woods. There were to be no groups of more than 10 people or off-trail ventures, and no more horses, bikes, off-leash dogs, drones or fireworks.

The trail enthusiasts spending their Saturday pouring sweat equity into the trail were ecstatic about the transformation, and rightly so. It felt as though Max Patch had been raised from the dead, its purity and wildness reclaimed from the clutches of party culture.

But, while I left the mountain that day feeling refreshed and joyful, a note of sadness underpinned those emotions. The new rules for Max Patch had been necessary—that much was easy to see—but how many rules can you layer on top of an outdoor place before the experience of using it fundamentally changes?

I can’t blame anyone for what’s happening. Of course ever-increasing numbers of visitors want to spend their vacation here, because these mountains are unspeakably gorgeous. And of course that heightened volume is spurring new management approaches, because the heightened use is simply unsustainable without some restrictions on behavior.  Nevertheless, as I see more and more of my favorite places overrun with visitors and burdened with new rules, I can’t help but wonder if the very qualities that make time in the woods so restorative are doomed to disappear.

I wish I’d camped on Max Patch while I had the chance.

Celebrate public lands

The 29th annual National Public Lands Day is Saturday, September 24, with volunteer events planned nationwide to give public lands some love. Find one near you at neefusa.org/npld-event-search.