Park It . . . Then Park It

"It would be chaos if everybody drove back in here," says Paula Marquis. "I guess this is the way all the big parks are going to go."

She might be right. Mass transit is nothing new in national parks. According to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), 96 units of the park system operate some kind of alternative to the one-family/one-car model, from the ferryboats of San Francisco's Alcatraz, Michigan's Isle Royale and the Statue of Liberty to the shuttle buses, vans and trolleys in parks such as Denali and Glacier Bay in Alaska. And as more people try to wedge more cars into the most popular parks, observers say shuttle systems similar to Zion's will almost certainly become more common.

"You have to look at each park individually, but everybody thinks it's going very well at Zion," says Gerry Gaumer, a Park Service spokesman. "It could be a good model to follow."

"Absolutely," says Laura Loomis of the NPCA. "A lot of parks could benefit from a system like this."

Acadia National Park in Maine already has a voluntary shuttle, paid for in part by L.L. Bean, that brings visitors into the park from Bar Harbor. The free service has proven hugely popular, cutting summer traffic congestion and reducing park pollution by as much as shutting down one power plant would do, Loomis says. At Harpers Ferry, W.Va., visitors leave their cars at remote lots and ride buses down into the cramped little mountain town. And shuttle systems are on the planning boards of several of the biggest and most popular parks, including Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Great Smoky Mountains (see story on Page P4 for details).

Each of these parks faces its own set of traffic problems, and none is likely to get a Zionlike mandatory shuttle along with a ban on cars from the park's interior, even seasonally. (The Cades Cove area of Great Smokies, a one-way, 11-mile loop with overwhelming congestion, is one that may opt for the full Zion). But each park still faces hard opposition from local businesses and officials who fear that Americans won't visit a park that doesn't welcome their cars as well.

"They should come here and see," says Dean Cook, general manager of the Best Western Zion Park Inn in Springdale, and president of the Zion Canyon Visitors Bureau. A shuttle stop sits right in front of his motel, and a group of his guests wait there for the bus. The local opposition largely vanished, he says, once the tourists embraced this new option so heartily. "The impact of the shuttle has been terrific. The ambiance has completely changed. You can actually hear the river running."

Back inside the park, I hop on and off the shuttle system like a Gray Line tourist with an all-day pass. On a bus with a huge bat posted on the side, the driver rattles on about the surrounding geology: "The Navajo sandstone is only 89 percent solid. The rest is water that filters very slowly through. The water continuously seeping from Weeping Rock has been dated to be 4,000 years old.

"Next stop -- Weeping Rock."

I step off and climb up the short trail to the mossy overhang where old, old water drips out of the rock onto my face. By the time I get back to the road, another shuttle is pulling up, this one with a lizard on its side. It's full, and just after I squeeze into the last seat, a young family of six climbs up. The father sees the crowd and looks as if he might back down the steps. But his littlest girl, about 7, cries, "Oh boy, we get to stand!" and on they come.

They are the Arnell family, from Camarillo, Calif., and in spite of not getting seats every time, they've embraced shuttle life. "It's like a ride for the kids," says mom Liesl, 30. "It stops right by our campground [near the visitors center], and we just jump right on."

Eventually, I do follow Ranger Anderson's advice, and get off at the Grotto stop for the two-hour climb up to Angels Landing. It's a beautiful scramble (about half of it through a cool, narrow rift called Refrigerator Canyon) and a surprisingly tricky one. "This is one of our most strenuous hikes," the shuttle driver had said. "It's not for those with a fear of heights." The last few hundred yards of it are along sheer drops of the certain-death variety, with chains bolted to the rock to provide a physical handhold and some mental hand-holding, too.