Acadia visitation likely to crack 4M for first time ever

Courtesy / Acadia National Park Acadia National Park is tops in social media. This photo, on Acadia’s Facebook page, shows a trail packed with hikers.

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By Laurie Schreiber

Acadia National Park is on pace for more than 4 million visits this year for the first time in its history.

And a busy year is resulting in about double the number of rescues compared with previous years.

That’s according to park officials who spoke to the Acadia Advisory Commission at its virtual meeting yesterday.

“There are a lot more people here,” Acadia’s superintendent, Kevin Schneider, said.

Acadia is among the top 10 most popular national parks in the United States, with more than 3.4 million visits in 2019, the previous record year.

Acadia’s largest and by far most visited district is on Mount Desert Island. It has smaller districts on the neighboring Schoodic Peninsula and on Isle au Haut.

22% bump

This year, visitation to date is 22% above the five-year pre-pandemic average, Adam Gibson, a social scientist with the park, told the commission.

Data from the Maine Department of Transportation also suggest there’s an increase in Maine visitors traveling this year to the park, a greater percentage of which are entering the park in individual cars rather than motor coaches or a free shuttle bus system called the Island Explorer.

This has resulted in close to 500,000 more visits to the park than in previous years and about 190,000 more vehicles entering than in previous years.

In the spring of 2020, the park saw “a huge rush” of visitors that represented a much quicker and steeper ramp-up than previous springtimes, he said.

Record monthly visitation began in October 2020 and has continued since then, he said.

Reservation system

Gibson also modeled visitor trends at Cadillac Mountain, where a new vehicle reservation system was implemented this year.

The system is part of a plan to reduce congestion at hot spots. At Cadillac’s summit, the number of vehicles in the past often overwhelmed parking capacity. Before this year’s reservation system, the park had taken to frequently closing the road leading to the summit once a certain traffic count was triggered.

This year, Gibson estimated what would have happened at Cadillac’s summit if there were no reservation system, given the park’s overall increase in visitor numbers. He said the summit would have seen an average of 600 cars per day, compared with the 157 spaces available.

“That would have been a problem,” he said. “So this lends support to the reservation system.”

Visitor distribution

Gibson said it’s also important to recognize that the visitation increase isn’t evenly distributed around the park.

The park as a whole saw a 20% increase. But its most popular site, Bass Harbor Head Light saw a 36% spike. Acadia’s Schoodic Peninsula district saw a 10% increase.

Gibson noted that the visitation count might be one person or one vehicle that enters the park multiple times.

“People generally stay for multiple days,” he said. “If you visit five times, we count you five times.”

Commission member Kendall Davis observed that increasing numbers of people are parking outside the park and then walking in; he likened portions of some roads adjacent to the park as being “like a massive parking lot.” Davis wanted to know if the park has looked into controlling the overflow of vehicles into surrounding communities.

“It’s taxing the local infrastructure and local safety of people driving through certain regions,” he said. “Can it be controlled somehow?”

Gibson said the park continues to explore traffic congestion and to work with community members on the problem.

Schneider said the problem is possibly exacerbated by the reduction this year of Island Explorer routes. The Explorer provides free shuttle bus service through the park, allowing visitors to leave their vehicles parked at their lodgings or centralized lots. But the service’s operator, Downeast Transportation Inc. in Ellsworth, suspended the service in 2020 and substantially curtailed it for 2021. Plans to curtail the service were worked out when reduced capacity guidelines were still in place early this year.

One local resident wanted to know if a reservation system is being considered for the entire park, given overflow problems into surrounding communities.

Schneider said the reservation system is just one of a suite of measures that are part of the park’s transportation plan, which began to roll out in 2020 and includes details for future implementation such as expanded parking lots and expanded Explorer service.

He said Bass Harbor Light is high on the park’s priority list to address overparking issues.

Rescues double

It was also a busy year for rescues and medical incidents, said Acadia’s chief ranger, Thérèse Picard.

A typical year through August would see 24 to 27 rescues. This year has seen 50 rescues so far, almost double.

A rescue means more than a walkout, she said. Each rescue takes 15 to 30 personnel, depending on factors such as the location of the person in distress and the terrain, which can range from easy trails to cliff faces involving rope carries.

“They’re very labor-intensive,” she said.

Rescue personnel include park employees across all divisions plus a longstanding relationship of over 30 years with a volunteer group called Mount Desert Island Search and Rescue. Sometimes there is more than one rescue in progress at the same time.

About 50% of rescues are due to lower limb issues such as sprained ankles and broken legs. Major search-and-rescues can cost up to $15,000 and run eight hours or more, she said.

Call volume is also up for the park’s emergency medical service, for calls such as cardiac issues, she said. The service runs in partnership with Mount Desert Island’s three ambulance services and Schoodic Peninsula’s ambulance service. So far this year, Acadia’s EMS team has received 116 medical calls, compared with about 90 in 2020. However, 2109 was pretty close to this year, she added.