San Luis Obispo Tribune: Rangers at Yosemite National Park are looking for a faulty car-counting device after finding out their official visitor numbers were down eight percent, although last month was one of the busiest they can remember.
“It’s really hard to believe we’re down compared to last year,” said park spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman. “Something is broken. We had a lot of people here in June.”
The heavy winter rains and snow left a huge snowpack on the Sierra Nevada, which made for beautiful waterfalls that attracted hordes of tourists.
So rangers think that one of the park car-counting devices – in-ground gadgets that work by sensing the weight of each car – wasn’t working properly.
Rangers also had a problem with their computer system, which registered 92,000 visitors entering through the park’s east gate at Tioga Pass. That entrance was closed down most of June because of leftover snow, and rangers estimate that only 3,600 people entered through that gate after it was opened on June 24.
The error was discovered on Tuesday by the Yosemite-Sierra Visitors Bureau in Oakhurst, which notified park officials.
Technorati Tags: California, news, outdoor, yosemite