Protecting resource and visitor experience conditions in U.S. national parks, wildernesses, and similar protected areas is mandated by federal policies (e.g., Wilderness Act of 1964, National Park Service Act of 1916) and requires development of monitoring protocols that allow managers to detect visitor use and resource impact trends as well as to evaluate management effectiveness. "Resource impact," in this case, is defined as any undesirable visitor-related biophysical change to such resource components as soil, vegetation, wildlife, and water (Leung and Marion 2000). The need for monitoring has become more important as a result of the growing adoption of visitor capacity management frameworks for protected areas, such as Visitor Experience and Resource Protection (VERP) and Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC). As visitor use in wilderness continues to rise, types of use continue to diversify, and fiscal budgets become tighter, managers are challenged to find time and money to conduct quality visitor impact monitoring programs.