I have many reservations about how BSP handled the issue procedurally.
The reported conversation with the rangers before the ascent gives the appearance of a waiver granted and then arbitrarily rescinded without notice.
The citation for excessive party size appears to be founded upon the crowd of well-wishers who attached themselves to Mr Jurek's entourage. Holding him strictly liable for those raises the question of how far his duty to control party size extends. Is he required to ask politely that they leave? Make a stronger attempt to drive them away? Abandon the attempt to ascend if they will not disperse? Or merely accept guilt for the fact that a famous person attracts a crowd? Nevertheless, administrative violations such as this frequently are strict-liability. But for him, the crowd would not have gathered; no mens rea is required. It would certainly have been an intersting publicity message had Mr Jurek turned around once well-wishers had failed to disperse and sworn out a complaint against them at the next opportunity. Is it true that nothing less would have satisfied the law in this case?
The citation for littering, I'll accept. Spraying champagne is improper disposal of wastewater/food waste above treeline. It is possible to open a bottle in celebration without indulging in a symbolic orgasm at the moment of victory. I know; I've been in parties that have had a discreet toast upon achieving a goal. (Perhaps the most memorable was that John Burroughs's granddaughter shared a sip of champagne with me when she successfully reënacted his ascent of Slide Mountain.)
The citation for public drinking - given that permission was sought and apparently granted - was petty, but it is unclear what the legal standing might be if the ranger was acting ultra vires in granting permission. In any case, with discretion it could surely have been avoided. It is very difficult to get a conviction for public drinking when the bottle is enclosed in a paper bag, the drink is hidden by the ubiquitous red plastic cup, the participants are not obviously intoxicated, and consent to search is not obtained. The courts look dimly on fishing expeditions.
If Mr Jurek was cited personally for infractions committed by the media crew, that is ridiculous. Respondeat superior does not apply. Even if Mr Jurek received an indirect benefit of publicity from their actions, they were not in his employ or acting under his direction. They worked for their respective magazines, broadcasters, publishers. The law here, nevertheless, permits very narrow interpretations of commercial activity. The FAA has held that posting drone video to YouTube retroactively makes the drone flight 'commercial aviation' by virtue of the advertising attached to the video. It is possible that under this type of interpretation, Mr Jurek's party was in violation of the 'no commercial photography' rule simply by failing to take action to ensure that their celebratory snapshots with camera phones were not shared with the media. [1] Did Mr Jurek obtain permission to display the Clif Bar logo on his headband? [2]
The most disturbing procedural point, to me, is that Mr Bissell's office issued multiple press releases regarding the citations prior to Mr Jurek's even being arraigned, much less convicted. You're an attorney - what would you say about a prosecutor who insists on trying his case in the media so as to make a tangentially related political point?
In any case, the public conduct of Mr Bissell damages public support for the point that he claims to wish to advance: that the sheer number of A-T hikers has strained his resources beyond the breaking point. I'm making the charitable interpretation that the strain had simply driven him to his personal breaking point - that this is indeed a bid to leverage a well-publicized and sponsored event to call attention to his plight.
As petty as that move might be, it does actually support the idea that the plight is real. The narrative that Mr Bissell is advancing is that A-T users are too numerous for the park to hope to accommodate, and that a comprehensive reappraisal of the relationship between the park and the A-T (either by relocating the trail, or by enacting severe restrictions on the number of its users) is long overdue.
I think that those who pillory Jurek - and equally, those who pillory Bissell - are in fact trying to deny that broader reality. The Trail has been loved to death, and maybe if they heap all the blame on the one individual who stepped a short way over the line in a very public setting, they can postpone the inevitable for one season longer. If we sacrifice Jurek for transgressing so visibly, perhaps our own transgressions will be tolerated for another little while. That's not going to get to the heart of the problem, and we'll be back here with another 'perp walk' next season.
[1] I've been told that the 'no commercial activity in wilderness areas', even interpreted this aggressively, has withstood First Amendment scrutiny. People have been cited ex post facto for selling photographs for which they had no commercial intentions at the time they were taken. While I don't have citations at the moment for the case law on this, it disturbs me, because I have myself come as close to the boundaries of the law - including the use of a model in the photo shoot. A vacation shot of my daughter wound up being sold as a stock photo of a healthy young woman atop a mountain attached to an article on the benefits of hiking that appeared in the sort of magazine that graces HMO waiting rooms. Nobody has attempted to come after me for it.
[2] Incidentally, the Adirondack Park draws a much brighter line about this sort of thing. They simply forbid any activity with commercial sponsorship without prior clearance. The fact that Jurek was open about his commercial sponsors would already have made the event unlawful ipso facto. The current circus would be entirely unnecessary. It remains unclear how strictly the prohibition could be interpreted. I do not know whether, for instance, I might be required to obscure manufacturers' logos on my clothing and gear even though I have no relationship with the manufacturers apart from being their customer. I suspect that a clever prosecutor could advance the argument that I get the advantage of a lower price in return for offering publicity for the manufacturer, rendering my activity commercial. IOC has attempted to advance such an argument against spectators of the Olympic Games whose clothing showed the trademarks of vendors who were not sponsors of the Games. I suspect that the argument might be accepted if an administrative law judge got out on the wrong side of the bed that morning, while the prosecutor had an unrelated point to make to the public.