The Bureau of Land Management is weighing increasing its daily visitor limits from 20 to 96 people a day at The Wave, a popular rock formation near the Utah-Arizona border.
A 6-mile round trip hike through tall sandstone buttes and sage brush is required to get to the Wave, a wide, sloping basin of searing reds, oranges and yellows in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.
The agency is asking for public comment and changes could be implemented as soon as October, agency official Mike Herder said.
Applications to hike The Wave have drastically increased over the past five years as the trail's colorful, contoured landscape becomes increasingly well-known.