[pct-l] Hiker Trash

[Charles Doersch]

Thanks, Diane. We now are planning to pack an extra garbage bag each for
along-the-route trail care. I've never seen trashing here in the many high
mountain trails outside Boulder -- the worst we get on trails are little
plastic bags of dog poop that wait in the trail ostensibly for the owner to
pick up on the way back. I wonder how many manage it? But otherwise, rare.
Areas accessed by dirt bikers and atv's and four-wheelers seem to get sudden
dumps of beer cans and potato chip bags ... that's off in other parts of the
Rockies, tho. And not by hikers, so far as I can tell. Yikes!

Charles.

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 12:42 PM, Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes <
diane at santabarbarahikes.com> wrote:

>
> On Jun 5, 2011, at 10:00 AM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:
>
> > On 6/5/2011 8:13 AM, Charles Doersch wrote:
> >> We're also planning on the thru-hike in 2012 ~ and I guess I'm just
> >> baffled by the reported incidents of trashing.
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >> Is there a subset of PCT-hikers who are likely to do this?
> >
> > Two comments:
> >
> > First, yes, it seems that there is a small number of thru hikers and
> > section hikers who are irresponsible, and will trash the trail.
>
> I don't think it's even that small. I section hiked over the San
> Jacintos last weekend and followed a trail of blue, yellow and orange
> electronic wires. I thought okay, maybe these wires are being
> discarded by the hoards of dayhikers or boy scouts or whatever that
> come up Devil's Slide or the Tram, but no, the wires continued all
> the way down to the faucet and beyond. Who hikes that section of the
> desert but committed PCT thru or section hikers? And why would
> someone keep cutting of pieces of wire and leaving it on the trail
> anyway? It was baffling.
>
> At the faucet there was some trash under the rock.
>
> Two weekends before my San Jacinto trip I hiked from Big Bear to
> Cajon Pass area and picked up wrappers and other trash all along the
> way. Forget road crossings, the trash was in the wilderness areas. I
> picked up a fresh wrapper right in front of a hiker just standing
> there next to Holcomb creek. Was it his wrapper? I don't know, but I
> made a big deal about picking it up. I camped at a spot with a piece
> of polyurethane foam in the trail and hikers were walking back and
> forth from their camp spot to a creek, stepping right on the foam. I
> picked it up. It fit in my pocket.
>
> Many hikers, even if they aren't leaving the trash, are not bothering
> themselves to pick any of it up. And they are not bothering to leave
> places nicer than they found them. A lot of the hikers I met have a
> sort of "we're so awesome, our adventure is so extreme" attitude.
> Only a few seem to have a grateful attitude toward the wilderness.
> Maybe that comes after the High Sierra?
>
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