People can't help but disturb the backcountry when they camp.
Campers can minimize the impact they make, however.
For one thing, they can confine their camp activities to one small core area instead of spreading out, creating satellite camp sites and inadvertently creating social paths between the camp sites and points of interest, Steele said. During her seven years as a ranger in the Rocky Mountain National Park of northwest Colorado, Steele said she noticed that a typical core area seems to be as big as a tent and about five feet beyond that on all sides. It generally has no vegetation. Steele has been studying backcountry camping since January 1996, because Rocky Mountain National Park officials want to determine the state of their 226 backcountry sites. She has analyzed eight years of data from more than 150,000 campers.