Anza Borrego Desert State Park - California State Parks - State of ...

Final Report – October 2001
Table 50. Management action to maintain tolerable crowding conditions (Fish Creek,
Blair Valley).
1 = strongly disagree
Mean Median Std. Dev.
5 = strongly agree FC BV FC BV FC BV
Encourage dispersed camping 3.99 3.91 4.00 4.00 1.23 1.14
Information about alternative sites 4.14 4.18 4.00 4.00 1.03 0.85
Limit number of groups 3.66 3.91 4.00 4.00 1.29 1.10
Increase camping availability 3.85 3.79 4.00 4.00 1.19 1.11
Close some roads to vehicles 2.99 3.31 3.00 4.00 1.46 1.42
Prohibit roadside camping 3.16 3.41 3.00 4.00 1.47 1.24
In comparison to survey respondents in Blair Valley, visitors surveyed at the Fish Creek
location were slightly less accepting of limiting use, closing of access roads, or
regulations prohibiting roadside camping (Table 50). Overall, visitors at both sites
appeared more accepting of dispersed camping, being given information about
alternative sites, limiting the number of other groups, and increasing the availability of
camping opportunities than they would accept restrictions on road access or roadside
camping.
Acceptability of Trail Standards at Borrego Palm Canyon
The issue identified by ABDSP staff for Borrego Palm Canyon included questions of
trails and the standard of trail maintenance visitors preferred to see. To assess these
preferences, a photo series (Panel 4) was used to depict trail conditions ranging from a
small sandy path with evidence of few hikers (Photo 1), through increasing amounts of
use and trail engineering (Photos 2 through 5), and ending up with Photo 6 representing
heavy use, and heavy maintenance conditions.
The question presented to visitors taking the survey was:
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park provides a variety of trails. The computer-generated
photographs simulate a range of trail conditions that the Park can provide. The managers
are interested in your opinion on how trail standards may affect your experience. To
help us assess this, please indicate the acceptability of the conditions represented by
each photo. The photo indicates what the trail would be like all the way to Borrego
Palm Springs. A rating of –4 signifies conditions are very unacceptable; a rating of +4 is
very acceptable.
The responses to this question and set of scenarios was very mixed (Tables 51 and 52).
The acceptability rating of Photo 1 (67.5%) was lower than that of Photo 2 (84.8%). And
by Photos 3 (80.3%) and 4 (80.6%), acceptability was still significantly higher than that of
Photo 1. It isn’t until Photo 5 (58.6%) that acceptability drops below that of Photo 1 for
the first time. There was a very strong reaction by the visitors surveyed to the conditions
depicted in Photo 5. Notwithstanding, conditions in Photo 5 were still acceptable to a
majority of visitors. The difference between Photos 5 and 6 is that the latter depicts one
additional sign and the trail appears to be paved.
Instead of describing a sigmoid form as do the previous curves, this has an almost
parabolic shape (Figure 42). Interestingly, there were very few unacceptable ratings for
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