When do I need a day-use pass at Golden Ears this summer?
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We are taking continued steps toward aligning day-use pass requirements with Visitor Use Management needs at Golden Ears this summer.
Day-use passes have been a seasonal fixture at Golden Ears Park since the COVID-19-related reopening of parks in 2020. The park, which sees over one million annual visitors (Figure 1), is routinely overwhelmed by vehicle traffic. On some peak summer days, Golden Ears – a park with no more than 1,100 day-use parking spots – may experience over 3,000 vehicles driving through its single park entrance point. While day-use passes can also have other benefits, such as
- reduced crowding and busyness on trails.
- reduced traffic for neighbouring communities.
- increased opportunity to share educational messaging with visitors.
- reduced negative impacts on cultural and environmental values; and
- opportunities to make meaningful strides toward reconciliation.
Free day-use passes are required at Golden Ears primarily to manage vehicle visitation and parking on the park’s busiest days and times. This is why day-use pass requirements at Golden Ears do not apply to non-vehicle modes of transportation or after 4 pm on any day.
For the 2024 season, day-use passes will be required to access Golden Ears Park each Friday through Monday, starting May 3 to September 2, 2024. Passes will not be required on the mid-week days of Tuesday to Thursday.
As we continue to manage visitation and free day-use passes at Golden Ears Park, we have focused on refining day-use pass requirements to ensure as many visitors can visit the park as safely as possible, while ensuring a positive visitor experience. At Golden Ears, this has meant understanding visitation trends and making data-based decisions. Ultimately, this has resulted in two major shifts for this year:
- Free day-use passes will be required earlier in the season, starting May 3, 2024. With warmer weather expanding into the traditionally cooler park shoulder seasons, demand for the park is also increasing during those times. More people are travelling to the park during warm, sunny days in May (Figure 1). Based on this trend, BC Parks has shifted the start date for day-use pass requirements forward to May 3.
- Free passes will now also only be required around each weekend, on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays from May 3 to September 2. Visitation isn’t consistent from day to day. As you can imagine, most visitors more commonly go to Golden Ears around the weekend. Over the four years of pass requirements at Golden Ears, reservation rates from Friday through Monday are significantly higher (Figure 2), particularly at the upper parking lots at Gold Creek and West Canyon. Therefore, we are shifting pass requirements to better align with those periods of demand.
These adjustments are part of our much larger goal of aligning Visitor Use Management interventions with the specific needs of each park. Crucial to the success of each decision is monitoring impacts, and iterating, improving, and adapting requirements as things change. The data we collect allows us to understand these visitor trends. Stay tuned for a more comprehensive release of day-use pass and attendance data this summer.
Figure 1 – Golden Ears attendance
Figure 2 – Day-use pass reservation rates
