In areas with appreciable horse use, the station 

 location should provide room for stock and include a 

 hitching rail. The permit station should be designed to 

 invite a stop to adjust cinches, stirrups, or packhorse loads. 

 A sign near the trailhead could inform visitors, especially 

 horsemen, of the distance to the station and point out that it 

 is a good place to check saddles and other tack, somewhat 

 like a highway sign, "rest area ahead." 



Station Design 



The station design tested included a map, both as a 

 service and as an attractor, and consolidated all informa- 

 tion in one place. Permit boxes were a conspicuous bright 

 blue. 



No design alternatives were tested, but bright colors 

 and eye-catching design probably are helpful in in- 

 fluencing visitors to stop and leading them to filling out a 

 permit. Red or orange permit boxes might have been more 

 effective. Backpackers sometimes trudge along, eyes fixed 

 a yard ahead of their feet, and both color and placement 

 need to be designed to make the station impossible to 

 pass by unnoticed. 



Station Maintenance 



The permit stations in the Spanish Peaks were 

 visited frequently and kept well supplied with forms and 

 pencils. Busy locations were usually visited every other 

 day and even the most lightly used stations at least once 

 a week. 



Frequent maintenance is essential. No data can be 

 obtained if a station runs out of forms, and the lack of pens 

 or pencils will deter many visitors. The inability to obtain 

 a required permit puts conscientious visitors in an awkward 

 position. Do the visitors leave without a permit, or take 

 the time to try to get one elsewhere? A poorly maintained 

 station tells the visitor that the permit requirement (or 

 registration) is not important to the agency. 



The effect of vandalism can also be limited by frequent 

 servicing. All permit forms, blank and completed 

 (completed forms were exposed in the design used) were 

 stolen from the Spanish Creek station about July 15. Only 

 2 days' worth of completed forms were lost. With in- 

 frequent maintenance this interruption would have been 

 much more serious. Managers, although discouraged, 

 should not use vandalism as an excuse to do nothing. 

 Unfortunately, vandalism is a cost of doing business. 



Monitoring Compliance 



If a self-issued system is used, periodic monitoring of 

 visitor compliance is essential. Monitoring should encour- 

 age better compliance over time. Fairness to those visitors 

 who make the effort to comply would seem to require an 

 enforcement effort. Monitoring is also necessary to check 

 compliance rates, which must be estimated with reason- 

 able accuracy to convert permit data into acceptable use 

 measurements, and which can shift with time. This study 

 suggests recording compliance based on length of stay, 

 and at least for day-users, on method of travel. 



Based on results, to estimate total actual use, permit 

 data for the Spanish Peaks would be multiplied by about 

 1.4 for campers, by about 2.0 for day-hikers, and by about 

 4.0 for horseback day-visitors. Until more experience 

 accumulates, the possibility of summer-fall differences 

 needs to be checked, as well as possible differences in 

 compliance between campers who hike and those who use 

 horses. 



The most efficient way to monitor compliance is to 

 have wilderness rangers keep careful records of their 

 compliance checks, and tabulate and analyze these 

 records each winter, after the main use season. Wilderness 

 rangers will tend to contact a larger proportion of 

 visitors who penetrate the area than of the visitors who only 

 travel in the periphery— especially, the brief, day-users. 

 This will probably cause the rangers' compliance checks 

 to overstate compliance for day-users. This may not be 

 critical, but some trailhead checking could provide data 

 for adjusting this compliance estimate if desired. The 

 traffic counter-camera system is effective for monitoring 

 use if carefully installed and well-maintained. It is an 

 effective tool for accurate use measurement and classifica- 

 tion. 



Data Editing 



Prompt editing, especially by people familiar with 

 the area and its use, has numerous advantages. Incomplete 

 or obviously inaccurate data can sometimes be corrected 

 without resorting to guessing. Keeping reasonably 

 current on editing and coding avoids an overwhelming job 

 with insufficient time at the end of the season, just before 

 the report is due. 



14 



