Permits in the preserves
It was a chilly and rainy Monday in September just after 8 a.m. The 70-spot parking lot of the Adirondack Mountain Reserve contained eight cars, one belonging to Chris Hunter. The 49-year-old Schenectady science museum archivist wore a long raincoat and held a walking stick. He was ready for the slog to a couple of waterfalls and the iconic fjord view from Indian Head if the rain didn’t get to him.
The reserve’s new parking reservation system, which kicked off in May and runs through the end of October, afforded Hunter a little extra sleep. He had never hiked at the AMR before and had seen the photos of Indian Head on social media.
“It can be a little bit intimidating to find the parking,” he said, noting he would have had to get to the lot much earlier if there were no reservations. “On the flip side, leaf peeper season—it’s kind of like getting a hot concert ticket, which is why I’m here on a Monday, regardless of the weather.”
The reserve is the first location in the Adirondack Park to institute a parking reservation system, though forest preserve neighbors to the south in the Catskill Park’s Peekamoose Valley have had something similar for a few years. Visitors have both embraced and shunned the limits on access to the state’s public lands, instituted as a kind of last-ditch effort when a large number of people and a place collide. While officials at the AMR are enthusiastic about the parking reservation system, Catskill leaders are leery of the crowd management strategy.
“It’s not a copy-and-paste for different areas, but
