“Have you been down there?” Chrystal Hale, 38, asked incredulously as she sped along a ridge line trail away from the bluff, her husband, Jonathan, their two young daughters, and dog not far behind.
FRANCONIA, N.H. — The first sign that you are approaching Artists Bluff are the hikers retreating in the other direction, fast as their boots will take them.
The family of hiking enthusiasts from Connecticut were not fleeing wildfire, bears, or a grumpy band of libertarians.
No, what sent the Hales bolting was a mob of amateur Instagram photographers, who each weekend in October descend on the vista over Echo Lake in search of the must-have fall foliage shot for their social media profiles.
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A granite overlook barely the size of a basketball court in Franconia Notch State Park, Artists Bluff in the past decade has attracted growing crowds with its stunning views, easy accessibility — less than a quarter-mile from the main parking lot — and wide promotion on Instagram. The crush of people, many kitted out in Gucci and Calvin Klein with no intention of hiking farther, often dismays hikers looking for a peaceful day in the outdoors and puts serious strain on the park’s trails, staff, and ecology.
“When the foliage pops out, all reason goes out the window,” said the park’s general manager, John DeVivo.
Shilpa S. Prakash took a photo with husband Rahul Pradeep and two-year-old daughter Eva Rahul after arriving to the top of Artists Bluff. Erin Clark/Globe Staff
On peak foliage weekends, the crowds quickly fill two large parking lots and begin parking wherever they can along Route 18, with people often milling about in the road, said Angela Nguyen, who hiked to Artists Bluff the weekend of Oct. 15.
If the parking is chaotic, the narrow trail is pure pandemonium. Throngs make the slow, steep climb to the overlook, many with selfie sticks, 12-inch zoom lenses, even full-sized tripods in tow.
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“It was literally like a line that you would stand in [at] Disneyland waiting for a ride,” Nguyen said. “I was shoulder to shoulder with people.”
Like impatient drivers stuck in traffic, some people ditch the line — and the trail — altogether, scrambling through the woods to the bluff, said Nguyen, a 33-year-old who lives in Boston’s Seaport neighborhood. They are often greeted at the top by a scene from a rock concert, with so many people jockeying for the best spot that a woman lost her balance and pulled Nguyen to the ground.
“It was like ‘The Hunger Games’,” she said.
On a glorious day last weekend, golden sunlight illuminated the view from the sheer rock face of Cannon Mountain to the peaks of Lincoln and Lafayette. Berklee School of Music student Jonine Liu, 22, sat on the bluff in a white knit top, white imitation fur jacket, fluffy white pants, and white sneakers, striking a variety of poses as she took selfies on her phone.
Liu found Artists Bluff on Xiaohongshu, known as the Chinese answer to Instagram, explained her friend, Jinhao Hu, who was also on hand to take photos with a digital camera.
Taking photos of herself is “my hobby, kinda,” Liu said.
The name “Artists Bluff” dates to the Grand Hotel era in the late 1800s and early 1900s when resorts across the Whites catered to an upper-class clientele seeking escape from bustling industrial cities, Steve Smith, the author of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s “Comprehensive Guide to White Mountain Hiking,” said by e-mail.
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Back then, artists would scale the bluff with easels to paint Franconia Notch. But in recent months, the bluff seems to have reached new heights of popularity, he said.
“Perhaps there was some social media post that went viral this fall?” mused Smith, who owns a map and book store in nearby Lincoln.
Jonathan and Chrystal Hale hiked with their daughter Daniella on the Artists Bluff trail. Erin Clark/Globe Staff
Indeed. Instagram influencers who run travel accounts, known as “travelgram,” have flocked to Artists Bluff this year from as far as California, Colorado, and Canada, Aubry Curran, who runs her own travel account, said as she stood on the overlook.
It’s easy to blame influencers for turning a place of beauty and introspection into a stock backdrop, but most try to tell their followers how to prepare, said Curran, one of the few people on the bluff who wore hiking boots and warm clothes.
“They’re going to find it anyway,” the 26-year-old said. “You can only do so much.”
Steps away, a travel Youtuber from Chicago had just signed off a video blog, beckoning his viewers to like and subscribe.
The social media crowds began growing a decade ago as cellphone cameras improved, DeVivo said. They were supercharged during the pandemic, as people took to the outdoors to find solitude only to find that many others had the same idea.
The surge has come at a cost. The crowds have stretched the park’s ecology to the point of overuse, DeVivo said. They flout the “pack it in, pack it out” adage and seem unaware that mountain wilderness carries a certain level of risk.
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“A lot of folks are just,” DeVivo said, pausing to choose his words carefully. “Ill-prepared would be the most PC version of phrasing.”
Local 911 dispatchers even have a name for the calls they receive when the Instagram crowd stays on the bluff past sunset. “Unexpected darkness” calls.
Alex Wong, Jason Choy, and Mike Yee were there on Saturday. Erin Clark/Globe Staff
“We actually had somebody call the local dispatchers to show concern for the weight limit on Artists Bluff,” DeVivo said. “Now, you’re talking about a geological formation that’s been there for a million or millions of years. So that one was shut down pretty quickly.”
Things have reached the point that Franconia Notch and the state parks division are working on a social media counteroffensive to promote other state parks as a way to thin the crowds and plan to reach out to influencers to convince them to do the same, DeVivo said.
Despite the drawbacks, some locals are pleased that so many city slickers are discovering the outdoors and say it’s a point of pride that tourists choose their neck of the woods.
“I personally don’t begrudge people the opportunity to get out there and enjoy the trails and scenery,” Smith said. “Tourism is our economic lifeblood up here, and it’s great to see people enjoying the beauty of our mountains, as long as they treat them respectfully.”
By dusk, the bluff was almost deserted. A $19.99 receipt for Sam Adams purchased three days earlier in Hooksett crinkled in the cold wind gusting through the valley from the south. A half-empty bottle of red Gatorade sat abandoned by a rock. Orange peels littered the edge of the outcropping.
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Only two people remained as the sun dropped below the ridge line. Mahia Chowdhury stood, wind whipping her hair around her face, in a ruby red evening dress, as her husband, Mustafa Shovon, pulled two high-heeled black boots for her from a white plastic bag. After a few more twilight photos for Chowdhury’s Instagram, the pair from Alabama called it a day.
Chowdhury swapped the high heels for stylish sneakers and the two began a slow descent in the darkness. When she became unsure of her footing, Chowdhury got down on her hands and crab-walked in her dress down the stair-like stones of the trail, bathed in the dim light of Shovon’s iPhone.
Shannon Larson of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Alexander Thompson can be reached at alexander.thompson@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @AlMThompson