National parks around the world are increasingly attracting visitors to experience pristine and unique natural environments. While increases in national park tourism provides business opportunities both in the parks and in adjacent communities, there are several social and ecological aspects that need to be monitored in order to sustain high quality visitor experiences. Crowding is often viewed as the most direct social impact of outdoor recreation and it is fundamental to the recreation experience since it is a negative evaluation of a certain user density. It can be closely linked to the concept of recreational carrying capacity which is the level of use beyond which social impacts exceed acceptable levels. Crowding is of interest both to recreation managers and researchers because it can be controlled through proper management actions. This paper reports a study of perceived crowding and visitor satisfaction in a front country recreation environment along with the effects of trail design and hiking patterns. Visitors to Njupeskär waterfall in Fulufjället national park in the Swedish mountain region were surveyed between June and September 2001. Approximately 36,000 visitors during the summer did the three kilometer long round hike to the waterfall. The results show that 25 percent of the visitors reported some degree of perceived crowding. Positive relationships were found between actual use levels, perceived encounters and crowding, while the level of perceived crowding had a negative effect on visitor satisfaction. This suggests that the satisfaction model is applicable at a high use nature tourism site with front country characteristics. Both the choice of trail and reported encounters had an effect on perceived crowding � suggesting that proper management actions and trail design can increase visitor satisfaction and benefit visitor experiences in national park tourism.