Heading Toward Last Hiker on the Trail?

Heather Mallick has a column in the 6 February 2008 Guardian Unlimited out of England titled "Reluctant Campers". A Canadian journalist, Mallick tells us that Americans (of the United States variety) don't go camping as much as they used to.

"Here are the statistics: Americans make 25% fewer trips to national parks than they did in the 1980s. Hiking the storied Appalachian Trail peaked in 2000 and has slid 18% since then. (Perhaps they read Bill Bryson's 1997 book on the subject, A Walk in the Woods, and discovered it was just as scary and arduous as he said.)"

Well, hmmm the headcount may well be down, but the word on the trail has been that Bryson's book increased the number of hikers, hasn't it?