>>2855298Not really true at all for all parks. You can easily find people in the valley of Yosemite miles form the trailhead, especially on the way to the dome. There's a number of parks where you absolutely need to either find obscure unpopular trailheads, arrive super early, or go in off season to not be crowded. Parks that have tiny parking lots or lottery systems also are way better at filtering people, but then you also need to arrive super early to get on any of the popular trailheads that way.
Also half the battle in some of the parks is literally getting a parking spot. Arrive past 8am? Good fucking luck in any of the popular parks. Tetons for example in summer, good fucking luck. It's not even a "popular" park compared to Yellowstone or Yosemite and it still had horrible parking issues unless you visit in the off season. If you can't park you can't even begin to get far in and having to start hikes at 4-6 am is not fun the older you get. There's a reason lottery systems exist in some of these parks.
Having gone to a lot of parks over the years and seeing the difference between summer and winter (snow) it is night and day for a lot of them. The idea that a mile or two is all you need is absolute cope at some of them and isn't the core problem.
