National parks prepare for the busiest summer on record

Floods, landslides and fires are making it challenging to prepare national parks for summer.

Today is a curtain raiser for the U.S. National Parks system, leading to its busiest season. In the past year, about 312 million people visited the national parks, hiking across the Grand Canyon, blogging Instagram stories from Joshua Tree and waiting for Old Faithful by Yellowstone's rainbow pools. Reminder: Don't touch the bison calves! On Memorial Day last year, so many people headed to the sites that many of their parking lots were full by midmorning. Park rangers start clearing the way for visitors weeks ahead of the busy season at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, home to 50 million-year-old rock formations. She restores dozens of miles of trails - removing debris and navigating steep cliffs on foot before the snow melts, my colleague Linda Qiu reported in a story with photos by Erin Schaff. The system s parks around the country are routinely filled with similar preparations.

Over hundreds of years, wind and rain have shaped the limestone in Bryce Canyon into a maze of spire-shaped rocks shooting into the air at 8,000 feet. The park's dramatic beauty is attributed to the process. Rangers are also facing a pain of choice, he said. The rain and snow sand down the rocks and degrades the trails throughout the year. Every spring, crews clear hiking paths of debris, mostly by hand, to limit destruction to the natural habitat. The amount of physical labor used to clear the trails was so surprise to me, he said. They are incredibly heavy, lifting a lot of rocks. How can I repeat this all summer to my back? Unusually intense storms and a wet winter this past year resulted in severe damage, delaying trail openings and causing environmental harm. One side of the trail is closed as crews continue repairs, digging out the surface of the trail and introducing wire baskets filled with big rocks along the perimeter to divert water and facilitate drainage.

Tourists can be at risk from rock slides and high elevations, too. Bryce averages about 40 search-and-rescue operations a year, often to help people who have fallen. Rangers and local volunteers receive basic technical rescue training, learning to use ropes and high-angle equipment for more complicated rescues. Last summer, a visitor could not complete a strenuous eight-mile hike. She tried to take a shortcut to return to the starting point and became separated from her grandchildren. Rangers found her clinging to a precipitous slope, unable to move. They secured her with ropes and lifted her to safety.

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