Annual climbers in the gorge?

[KELSO]

I was curious if anyone knew how many climbers we get annually at the gorge. Or if anyone knew how to track down that information it would be greatly appreciated! Just wanting to know some figures for a research project.

[KD]

how would that information be gathered? not meaning to sound negative, but outside of a rough guesstimate, how would it be feasible to assess the data. models built from parking lot/crag observations might come close for one area but how could that be extended to the region? it would be interesting to know how that data is surveyed.

[ElectricDisciple]

Kelso:

I'd check into the various tourist avenues that require someone to register or pay for something. For example:

1, Number of guests last year to Torrent Falls, and other places that require overnight stay.
2, Amount of money made last year at Miguel's for camping and find out a figure for how many people stayed there.
3, Number of waivers sent in to RRGCC for access to Muir Valley and other places that require waivers. #of waivers = number of climbers who've been there.
4, Poll redriverclimbing.com ("Have you climbed at RRG?")
5, Number of Overnight Parking passes sold (like #2).

Will this work?

ED

[KD]

you would still have to create some kind of statistica model to account for climbers within the visitor population - public information available from the fs can't accurately account to climbers, same thing for other overnight stay figures. probably the best data would come from parking lot/crag observations using the main lots/crags then using different dates to set your range.

[neuroshock]

public information available from the fs can't accurately account to climbers, same thing for other overnight stay figures.

agreed. otherwise, how could you track out-of-towners, like myself, who tend to stay at Abner's and climb at Roadside, Military/Left Flank, or the Southern Region?

[KELSO]

I appreciate all of the suggestions and realize that this info is going to be hard to gather. It is something that I have wondered for a while and will look into gathering a rough estimate with the help from your suggestions. There got to be a way to get at least an idea of the climbing #'s that the gorge see's annually.

[Paul3eb]

a couple questions:

-do you mean individual climbers that visit the gorge or do you mean number of climbers and total days they spend there? (the difference: you either mean 100 climbers or you mean 10,000 visits)
-what are you doing this for? just out of curiousity..

i'd contact miguel's, that's a good start. i'd run a poll on here, too. that'd be a good start..

other than that, it's pretty shaky numbers..

[KELSO]

Paul3eb:

-I mean individual climbers that come to the Gorge.

-This is something that I have wondered for a while and I was just wanting to know how many people the Gorge serves annually. I think this info can be helpful in a lot of ways. Not doing this for anything in particular for now.

[KD]

perhaps you could poll this site with a specific/appropriate question, then find a statistical muliplier and other varialbles and construct a model. aka an educated guess. for example the number of climbers related to those that visit this site, related to those who answer your poll, related to you input question. it should be a solveable problem to a point.

[meetVA]

3, Number of waivers sent in to RRGCC for access to Muir Valley and other places that require waivers. #of waivers = number of climbers who've been there.

not to be picky, but to be picky.

waivers sent to the RRGCC are for the PMRP.
waivers sent to the Webers are for Muir.