The past few years I've had the awesome fortune of having a boss that hikes and let me setup my schedule around backpacking, as well as a wife/hiking partner with lots of vacation time and flexibility with it. Doing our trips on weekdays meant getting prime camp sites and plenty of solitude, and was awesome!
This year, it looks like we'll be having weekends off together, and it's the last summer for a few years that I'll have any real time to hike (work/school), so I definitely want to make the most of it!
We're less than 2 hours from the White Mountains, which is where we do most of our trips. It is a complete zoo there on weekends though. Some of the popular trails feel more like being in city traffic than out for a hike. Designated campsites become moshpits. I'll never forget finally getting a perfect stargazing night and spot, bringing my mesh dome tent, and then being forced to share a single tent platform with a tent that god knows why was lit up with more neon lights than an EDM nightclub and felt the need to have country music playing. The caretaker struggled just to get them to move over to fit us in, so I didn't even bother requesting that they power down their UFO.
Even in more remote areas, groups far larger than the wilderness area allowable size always seem to end up right beside us, and proceed to scream all night. I do think it's good that so many people are out enjoying themselves, and I'm slightly exaggerating how bad it is, it's just hard to go from the relative quiet of weekday trips to the craziness of the weekend crowd.
No matter how crowded, I'd rather be in the woods than back home. That said, anyone have strategies for dealing with the crowds, or possibly for just changing attitudes and embracing the crazy?
I'm thinking of just taking a few days in late spring, and doing a bunch of light and fast hikes in the first few miles of the areas we're planning on hiking. Bushwack a bit and try to scope out secluded spots to setup a base camp when we get up there on Friday night's, then explore the area with daypacks the next couple days. Looking at the map I've already found a few areas that would be cool for this. It's a big change from our usual method of just picking a direction to go and then setting up camp where and when we feel like it, but I think it'd still be pretty cool.