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Post by CompassRds on Sept 11, 2016 12:39:43 GMT -8
Inspired by a recent thread, I was thinking back to all the trash I have picked up on trails over the years. Figuring others here have similar trail cleaning habits, and given the penchant for storytelling that many backpackers, either here or who I have met on trail, appear to share. I went looking to see if there was a thread like this on these forums and didn't find one.
So, what was the biggest or strangest piece of trash you've drug out of the wilderness or off a trail? Or do you have one with a story associated?
My biggest was a washer, apparently washed down in a stream miles from anywhere in the Shawnee NF, which friends and I drug and slugged a mile back to a trailhead after dropping our packs. Though I have also rolled a couple car tires out (one including its steel rim) over a mile to a trailhead.
Strangest was the small piece of heavy nylon rope with a carefully made loop attached to a stick that just kept going and going once I started trying to pull it up and obstinately refused to come out of the sand. After quite a bit of pulling and digging it turned out to be ~50' long with its other end looped through a railroad tie buried something like 3' into the shoreline at Indiana Dune NL. And, yes, I went and asked the rangers after cutting it free and lugging it ~3 miles to the Cowles Bog Trailhead trashcan and they swore up and down it wasn't theirs and they had no idea either. I think we all agreed it looked like an attempt at setting up a private mooring at the beach.
I bet many of us have picked up countless plastic water bottles, cans, candy bar wrappers etc., but has anyone else drug out something memorable?
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markskor
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Mammoth Lakes & Tuolumne Meadows...living the dream
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Post by markskor on Sept 11, 2016 13:05:34 GMT -8
Southern Yosemite...ain't sayin where exactly...the rusted remains of a 50 cal.  |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2016 13:40:34 GMT -8
A NOAA weather ballon and package.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2016 13:42:12 GMT -8
National forest road-less area: Someone had driven into the road-less area, assembled a complete campsite with tent, lounge chairs, etc. They had put together a large fire ring, dug into the ground a fire pit, and they had stockpiled an entire pickup-truck load of scrap lumber. All of this was in an area where campfires are prohibited year-round. In the fire pit were beer cans and broken bottles. Around the firepit were huge logs that also had been hauled in by pickup truck.
I took photos, examined the tent and chairs and found plenty of evidence that they had been abandoned perhaps weeks before. So I disassembled all the gear and placed it in stuffsacks. I collected all the trash, including broken bottles and beer cans and placed them into another old stuffsack that had been left there. I scattered anything that had been dragged to the site from the surrounding forest, including all the rocks.
All the gear and trash stuffsacks I carried in multiple trips to the nearest legal trail road outside the road-less area. I left it there neatly stacked and obvious to anyone driving along the trail road. I then returned to the campsite and got accurate bearings of the location.
Everything was too heavy for me to pack miles back to the trailhead. But as I had hoped, in the following week someone on the trailroad took the camping gear and trash with it. That saved me the trouble of driving up into the mountains to haul it out. I reported the wood pile and firepit to the forest service. They sent a summer crew into the area and hauled out the firewood and foreign logs, and filled in the firepit. A few weeks later I returned to check the site, and it was disappearing quickly into summer's growth of grass and herbs.
I'll never know who helped clean out what I had left along the trailroad, but thanks.
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Post by ecocentric on Sept 11, 2016 14:38:36 GMT -8
It was not far from Roswell, New Mexico but I don't think I should talk about it.
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Post by Lamebeaver on Sept 11, 2016 14:48:24 GMT -8
You know, trash is a funny thing....Modern mines need to submit a mitigation plan showing how they will restore the land after a mine is played out. 150 years ago, the old timers would simply walk away. Now, not only are those old mine ruins and equipment protected, but so are the "relics" that you might find where the miners dumped their bottles and cans.
Who knows, 150 years from now, that Coors Light can you missed digging trash out of a fire ring may also be considered a relic.
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Post by Kevin Palmer on Sept 11, 2016 15:42:29 GMT -8
Yesterday I was standing at an overlook watching the sun rise at Badlands National Park. I looked down a steep hill and noticed a couch laying at the bottom. I almost didn't notice it because the color blended in with the dirt. It's pretty sad that someone can come to a spectacular place like this and see it as nothing more than a landfill.
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tigger
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Post by tigger on Sept 11, 2016 15:59:25 GMT -8
Off-trail, the most common thing I find is balloons. Two stick out - I found a birthday balloon on my friend's birthday that we were celebrating. Secondly, I found a balloon that had a small note in a vial attached. It was from a young man who had asked for the person who found the balloon to let him know where it was found (with contact info). I took down the coordinates and mailed the information with a picture of the balloon. I never heard back but it was fun to send the info back.
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rpcv
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Post by rpcv on Sept 11, 2016 16:25:11 GMT -8
On Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park: 8 bricks, wrapped together in duct tape and stashed near the summit under a shrub (my husband carried those out). On a different day on another part of the summit, we found individual bricks (not duct taped) thrown down into a crevice. We carried those out, too. A beach chair. A full loaf of white bread. A retainer. More water bottles than I could ever count (but I guess that isn't terribly strange or unusual). The trail on that mountain is crazy busy and we volunteer up there, so we've seen....a lot. All of this, for those who aren't familiar, is ostensibly in a wilderness area within the national park.
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Post by CompassRds on Sept 11, 2016 16:39:17 GMT -8
at Badlands National Park.. noticed a couch... That sucks, I love that place. Did you report it? |
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mk
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North Texas
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Post by mk on Sept 11, 2016 17:53:48 GMT -8
Nothing big or unusual, but definitely tedious: tiny, foil confetti. Scattered everywhere in the dirt. It was around graduation time and graduates apparently would toss it in the air while having their picture taken on a particular trail we hike every weekend. So for a couple of weeks in a row, we picked those little bits of confetti out of the dirt. Tedious.
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zeke
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Post by zeke on Sept 11, 2016 18:03:20 GMT -8
we picked those little bits of confetti out of the dirt. Tedious. |
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mk
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Post by mk on Sept 11, 2016 18:06:07 GMT -8
And you didn't think to bring a Dust Buster?  |
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balzaccom
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Waiting for spring...
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Post by balzaccom on Sept 11, 2016 20:09:35 GMT -8
As has been noted, many of those damned mylar balloons. Grr.
But lots of other stuff as well, including some big things: an old truck, two or three different large steel tanks near mining sites. All that kind of thing.
On our last trip we hauled out a freeze-dried dinner envelope that someone had left unburnt in the fire ring.
It's endless. sigh
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rebeccad
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Writing like a maniac
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Post by rebeccad on Sept 11, 2016 21:28:30 GMT -8
Well, the best we found was a bear can full of garbage, clearly abandoned (probably set down behind the sitting log and missed in packing up, but it had obviously been there for a long time, and wasn't someone's stash for later retrieval). We packed it out and kept it, after cleaning it Too many balloons. Lots of candy wrappers, etc. Not a lot of really interesting stuff, but most of our backpacking is too far from civilization for a lot of crap to get hauled in. |
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