George wrote in message

There used to be a sort of tote board, like at Stillwater, on which
you selected a site and moveda numbered tag from the unoccupied to
oppupied side. This didn't work very well, so now you just sign in on
the log book and paddle in looking for a site (no pre-registration).

Ah this makes sense, I wondered what would happen if you got to the
choosen campsite to find less then desirerable, you would have to
return to the tote board to change camp sites.

That was one of the problems. One of many problems with such an
occupied/unoccupied honor system. Some people would find the site they
had chosen at random not to their liking and simply paddle on to
another, creating two errors on the board; an unoccupied site listed
as occuiped and also the reverse.

At Stillwater we've pre-selected a site, flipped the tag from
unocupied to occuiped and paddled out to find someone already camped
there. In one memorable episode we were a couple of hundred yards away
from the site, obviously headed ashore, when a motor boat shot past
us, beached at the site and hurriendly began disgorging gear.

We paddle up and discussed this with them, and they claimed that they
had flipped the tag. Not much we could do but paddle back to the put
in, flip another tag and try again.

In talking with the Rangers it appears that this was a not infrequent
occurance, with an even worse strategic reaction - some folks knowing
that this happens were flipping two or three tags in an effort to
increase their chances of finding an unoccupied site; the sites they
flipped but didn't use of course apeared to be occupied when looking
at the board.

And then there is the issue of having to paddle back to the put in if
you wanted to move on to another site later in the trip. All in all
those site occupancy boards created more problems than they solved,
and I thing pretty much every place in the Adirondacks except
Stillwater did away with them and went to a simple paddle out, first
come-first serve system.