Call me old fashioned but I’d like the national parks to be as free from visible technology as possible.
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So in June my friend and I hiked for a couple of hours to the edge of Exit Glacier near Seward Alaska. Not a difficult hike; lots of kids and other folks around. Also a strange buzzing sound (quite remote from anywhere). Turns out that the guy we passed on the trail with a metal case had lugged his whatever-copter out there (I had noticed it but thought it was camera equipment).
It’s not that it ruined the experience or anything. But it would have been nicer without it, because of the noise.
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I’m acting, and it’s too much for you? Look away friend.
Excepting, one presumes, things like roads, cars, restaurants, hotels, towns, etc…
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it’s not clear if you’re saying that all drone users are “stupid” for taking liberties of this nature, or that this one particular user is stupid because he crashed it - obviously, many users, whether stupid or not, will crash these devices, much as there are car crashes and plane crashes that happen to not-so-stupid operators.
So the point is:
should we allow just anyone to buy/use a drone?
clearly there will be far worse situations to come that have yet to be considered
I am more an indoor-type, so the more footage I can enjoy the better. And I really hope for small cheap drones with stereo panorama cameras at the source and Oculus Rift or compatible at the destination.
Also, that way I can enjoy your parks without having to deal with TSA and their ilk, and without suffering air travel and travel in general.
So, drone baby drone!
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i was there last summer and the blue pool in front of the prismatic spring is littered with hats of all shapes and sizes. it can get incredibly windy at that spot (you have to walk up over a small ridge) and hats just blow off, right into the pool. i probably saw a dozen of them.
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Great. Now we need to rid the National Parks of clothing… This will only increase drone usage…
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Well, I guess that’s one way to make people take only memories and leave only footprints. 
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A friend worked in California running a search/rescue outfit in the Monterey Bay area, and I recall him telling me about a guy who’d driven his truck into a “protected area” of some sort, like a National Wildlife Refuge or something of the like, and rolled the vehicle into a gulch where he couldn’t right it or remove it. Plenty of signage in the area told people not to drive there, and if they did and were caught, they’d pay a hefty fine and also whatever it cost to put the area right again. My friend was called in because the authorities couldn’t use a tow truck (sensitive area and all) so they had to do some crazy arrangement with slings and helicopters to remove the vehicle, all of which was paid for by the knucklehead who drove in there.
For my money, I say the NPS should charge the guy whatever it costs to remove the drone from the pool. Ignorance of the law is not a defense, and he should have known better than to be flying it over such a spot. And yeah, Xeni, you got the labeling right–he’s a dumbass.
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Sure, you need to have some facilities but in most parks you can hike to places with nothing but nature around you. In this setting I wouldn’t really fancy seeing drones buzzing about.
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If you hike somewhere and find yourself escaping roads but finding drones, just hike a little farther.
Today’s intrusive “technologies” are tomorrow’s essentials. People from 100 years ago would find things like radios, ubiquitous cameras, GPS units, cell phones, etc.—let alone cars and busy roads—to be very inconsistent with their idea of nature.
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The intelligence that lived in the geysers was old. That it existed at all was surprise enough. Yet it did, as though some minor trickster god had, whilst doing some grunt-work in this hot, muddy part of creation, slyly let out a burst of complexity where there should just be convection. And it thought things. Long, slow thoughts, stored in pressure in pipes, and temperatures in mudpools, coming to conclusions in gouts of steam. It had never even considered the chittering speed of electricity going places, slicing up time as fast as lightning in ones and zeros. How powerful such a thing could be.
Until the day some damn fool crashed his toy drone into the geyser.
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Not all federal land is the same. Some of us still care.
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Some places get different rules.
No harm from crashing a hipster helo in the woods somewhere, so long as nobody is putting on a fireworks show.
But there -are- some places that are a bit more… amazing. Maybe everywhere is just the same as anywhere else to some people? That would explain a lot.
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As with any technology there will be those who abuse it and ruin it for the masses or those acting responsibly. In this case, rc drones are starting to get in the news too much. I thought your comment about Amazon not selling common sense was hilarious! I do admit however I promote the responsible use of rc drones as the owner of www.rcdronewithcamera.com … and I do suggest products from Amazon. I think I will focus on writing an article targeted as “common sense usage”.
Oh yeah? If you’ve ever camped in a really cool, scenic and incredibly beautiful spot then watched as a bunch of yahoos pull up and decide that everyone needs to hear AC/DC at full volume. This is technology we can leave at home.
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Build an EMP gun.
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Would that be easier than asking the appropriate authorities to enforce the agreed on rules?
I ask because, for some folks, I bet it would be easier to build and wield an EMP weapon while in the great outdoors than it would be to accept that the rules exist, are reasonable and civil, and already cover that exact circumstance.
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No. But it’s way more fun!
