trash, hidden crap , and tp everywhere on JMT.

[jennifer ross]

Its a national monument and a very small wonder of the world. Please search images. There are signs everywhere not to go off trail because of the incredible amount of people that visit it. And if everyone climbed on these unique hexagonal fallen prices they would break apart faster which is why there are yellow sign everywhere stating the federal regulation prohibiting it. He even said to his girlfriend " I'm going to pretend I didn't see the signs or hear you say that." That's when I stepped in.

[MW]

I naively once thought I could go somewhere that no one had ever been and there would be no trash. After lots of travel, I'm not so naive now. Trash and destruction is everywhere. Its only the frequency that changes.

The issue of people trashing the trails and country side is not confined to one location, and isn't new. I'd say generally that as the number of people using an area increase, the trashing increases – litter, fire rings, etc.

People not caring, can't be bothered, thinking their special, thinking they can get away with it, their trash doesn't count, not thinking? Why do people do it?

For all that it happens – what can be done about it? I've had my own private anger about the trash and destruction I've found. I've tried confronting the culprits when I've seen them, tried a number of tactics like directed anger, shaming, education at individuals or groups. Anger seemed to be the most unsuccessful, shaming and education didn't seem to be outstanding winners either. Maybe because I'm always alone and one person isn't enough of an influence.

I'd hate to think there is nothing that can be, but short of having paid policing, or full time surveillance – what can be done?

Is there anything or we just need to resign ourselves that it happens, complain about it to like minded people, and blinker ourselves to not see it when we're out?

[Clint Hewitt]

I see said the blind man. Just looked up some images very cool formations.

Kind of a drift here but of all the controversial behavior. I personally dislike the instances of broken glass bottles. Tends to lessen the further out you get but it is still there. You can pick up trash left behind but hundreds of pieces of glass is a bit more arduous and dangerous of a task.

[Bob Gross]

"I personally dislike the instances of broken glass bottles. Tends to lessen the further out you get but it is still there."

I think it is rare for a litterbug to carry a full glass beverage bottle very far. The broken glass is much more likely to be found near a road. Then aluminum bottles are lighter, so when emptied they stand half a chance of being carried out properly.

–B.G.–

[USA Duane Hall]

If you have snooped around the Minarets area, you would have come across another rock pile, similar to Devil's Post Pile, outside the National Monument and free to climb all over as you see fit. Also an area where Native Americans camped, judging by the mortars? in the granite slabs and obsidian chips, cool place I thought and I don't get too worked up over history.

Duane

[Alex Wallace]

Yes, somewhere along the way the message did not get through to a couple of people. The frustrating thing is that in only takes a couple bad apples to affect all. So what can you (we) do? I recommend you (we) volunteer a couple of days for trail maintenance on a stretch of the JMT and actually be part of the solution. Who's in?

[Justin Baker]

FIRE PITS. EVERYWHERE. They make me rage. I disperse camp all the time and make fires on bare ground, but I don't understand why people feel the need to put a little ring of rocks there when camping outside of a designated site. Maybe it's some primal instinct from their car camping childhood.
Walking around and seeing little rock circles feels almost like walking around and seeing trash. Burn all your wood down to coals, stomp them into a fine power and bury it. Nobody will know about it.
In fact, if people were allowed to disperse camp and make dispersed fires, fuel supplies would not be much of an issue in some places. It's when a few hundred feet in each direction of a designated site gets stripped, then it's a problem.

You guys should really try and go to more remote national forests. I don't think you will regret it. I don't know about you guys, but I really like a place where I can shoot a gun and not bother anyone, and if I chopped down a tree it would rot and a new one would sprout by the time anyone else walked by. (not that I would do that though)

[jennifer ross]

I didn't even mention passing two completely separate backpackers with off the leash dogs… one even told us he'd been fly-fishing for 12 days and hadn't seen a ranger and then laughed about how his dog would go into debt if it got a fine.

I didn't say anything to the dog owners because obviously there was nothing I could say. But after seeing the second dog I thought about the dog crapand remembered why we pick up our dogs crap on trails, the predatory scent of it makes small mammals avoid the entire area, giardia, physically scaring off wildlife, chasing, etc.

[jennifer ross]

I should mention this is all my vacation time and I've been so excited for a year to take this much time off to thru-hike the jmt. I also had to take a week of unpaid leave which leaves my position insecure. My hopes were just really high. I work at Walmart and have to deal with the worst of humanity daily and this trip is what got me through the year thinking " I can't wait to get away from you people". I had a job interview in the middle of my planned hike so we are just driving back to rejoin the trail at red meadows and I'm hoping the rest of the trail isn't as annoying.

[spelt with a t]

I hope the rest of the trail manages to to make up for it. I have often wondered exactly what it's like on the more famous trails. I once wanted to thru-hike the AT. The more I learned the more it seemed like 5 months of socializing outdoors. Then I looked to the PCT but going by some trail journals I'm not sure it's much better in terms of solitude. This has nothing to do with the trash and bad behavior, but I understand the frustration of wanting to "get away" from people and finding them and their unburied crap everywhere.

[Aaron Benson]

Thanks for sharing your experience thus far. Hopefully it gets better for you and the second half will be a more positive experience.

""You can pick up trash left behind but hundreds of pieces of glass is a bit more arduous and dangerous of a task.""

Right. I'm still surprised by the amount of broken glass I see in the back country. Of course, it does lessen the further out you get but it's still there, even in the remote areas. Sometimes I'm impressed by what people will pack in – too bad they don't pack it out.

[USA Duane Hall]

Jennifer, since I always solo on my vacation trips and have to do a loop, maybe instead of a Interstate/Freeway trip, use the JMT Highway to access an area and to get away from the trash and so many people. I did a trip into a very popular area out of Mammoth a few years ago in August and did not see a sole for three days in the middle of my seven day trip. While on that trip, visited the most beautiful lake I believe I have bped to ever. Also, you can go in Oct. into very popular spots and not see a sole for 4-5 days. (Ansel Adams Wilderness). You'll see much prettier country. The PCT and JMT in CA get a lot of hype, but its the side trips where you see the great spots, as in postcard photo material. Good/better luck next time.

Duane

[A. B.]

Going anywhere popular is likely to be disenchanting.

[Mary D]

Duane and Evan, you are so right! Go to the areas less traveled!

I do hike a lot in the Columbia River Gorge (good place for training hikes, almost in my back yard) and notice the same thing. The popular trails are full of litter. One time I hiked one direction with a trash bag and met a couple of USFS volunteers going the other direction. The trail was litter-free for about a mile after I left them, and then I started finding trash again. I saw the volunteers afterwards and they reported exactly the same phenomenon after they passed me. It seems to take only a few people to turn the trails into a garbage dump!

[Hiking Malto]

To have the "bad" experience you described. The JMT is overloved, you picked the busiest time of year in a year that was compressed due to snow. Also, most of the issues of trash etc are much worse in the heavier used areas. Change any one of these and your experience would be different. I have hiked the JMT, the PCT portion of the JMT and countless hikes that include sections of the JMT and see little of what you describe. But I also spend 95% of my time on the trail vs in camp so I may not see the damage. Hopefully your second half goes better because that trail goes through some beautiful country and should leave you energized not depressed.

[Anonymous]

"I too have seen toilet paper, trash, illegal fire pits, imbeciles, illegal camps, and all other manner of debauchery and defilement on the JMT."

While all that crap on the JMT has always offended me, I always figured that a certain benighted segment of the backpacking population had to have someplace to do it and it might as well be someplace I didn't spend time. HOWEVER, on my last 2 trips into Kaweah Basin, a truly remote, hard to access area of eyewatering beauty, I have had to pick up trash. How someone could go put in the effort required to get there and then trash the place is beyond me. Something has changed in the last 10-15 years, because it was never that way before. I say this with a history of 7 trips there since 1987, during which I never saw a person or trace of same on the first 5 trips, save for one secluded campsite with a fire ring. What I saw there a week ago and 2 years ago is also happening with increasing frequency in the Upper Kern Basin and other relatively remote, beautiful areas where I spend the vast majority of my mountain time. I am disconsolate and beyond angry.

"Damn, I hate people.
Who's with me?"

I don't know what it is with people these days but yeah, Craig, I for one am with you. God the help the witless moron I ever catch doing that up there. It is the wilderness equivalent of p!$$ing in the baptismal, to be dealt with accordingly.

[Bob Gross]

Tom, I accept what you saw as the truth, and I don't dispute it one bit.

The question is why is this happening? What has changed?

Are you just seeing now what never existed before? Are backpackers now driven by new forces? Are they trained poorly now, as compared to ten or twenty years ago? Or, is it some kind of enforcement problem?

–B.G.–

[Dave T]

"What I saw there a week ago and 2 years ago is also happening with increasing frequency in the Upper Kern Basin and other relatively remote, beautiful areas where I spend the vast majority of my mountain time."

Now THAT is something I don't want to hear. Can't believe folks would get way up into those remoter areas and still leave garbage behind.

All we can do is keep cleaning up trash, keep dismantling fire rings, keep erasing the non-LNT traces we come upon. And giving whoever we find doing it a serious earful.

If you can't be fully LNT up in the High Sierra, you can stay the hell home!

[Anonymous]

"The question is why is this happening? What has changed?"

I don't know for sure, Bob, but I attribute it to a general breakdown in social behavior combined with more people getting out into the backcountry. Some of them are obviously very fit and apparently motivated to add the remoter places to their "resume" for bragging rights, clearly without having any capacity to appreciate what they are experiencing nor any sense of consideration for the environment or those who come after them. I think Cormick McCarthy expresses it very well in "No Country for Old Men". I guess that makes me an old man. :(

"Are you just seeing now what never existed before? Are backpackers now driven by new forces? Are they trained poorly now, as compared to ten or twenty years ago? Or, is it some kind of enforcement problem?

I think the former cries out for a need for the latter, but the backcountry rangers are few and far between. They simply can't be everywhere. That said, the problem has always existed. The difference is that it is becoming more widespread and frequent, even in places where it has always existed. My 2 cents.

[Bob Gross]

One time about 25 years ago, I was participating on a group backpack trip to an easy destination by a river. One beginner on the trip was from another country, and this person disappeared for a while, and then reappeared. It was later discovered that this beginner had gone to the river as a toilet! This was primarily a cultural thing. Where the beginner came from, that is how rivers were used.

Of course, that doesn't make it right for where the beginner was. I was particularly horrified, because that river is the source for the drinking water where I live 150 miles from there. I guess that makes me an old man also.

–B.G.–

[Anonymous]

"Now THAT is something I don't want to hear. Can't believe folks would get way up into those remoter areas and still leave garbage behind."

One of life's great mysteries. I try to see something positive in just about everything, but the best I can say in this situation is that its's happening in the twilight of my time in the Sierra. Pretty dismal, huh?

"All we can do is keep cleaning up trash, keep dismantling fire rings, keep erasing the non-LNT traces we come upon. And giving whoever we find doing it a serious earful."

Sort of like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the d!ke, IMO, but at least we can try. Longer term the solution lies in inculcating the proper values in kids early on, something increasing numbers of parents are clearly failing to do. I'm not optimistic that we'll see that change in my lifetime, so I guess it's up to us and the rangers for the foreseeable future.

Would you believe, the profanity police busted me for using the word for a dam, which can also be used to refer to a dominant le$bian?

[Kirsten Roos]

I'm planning on doing this trip next July. Kinda wish I would have skipped reading this post… a bit depressing.

[David Lutz]

Kristen – A little thread drift here…….that is a very cool looking boat. What is it? I used to have something similar.

As regards the JMT, the sections I have hiked have been very busy. I think it helps to go as late in the year as reasonably possible. Certainly after Labor Day.

One thing about having so many people out there is you come across all kinds of interesting characters.

[Kirsten Roos]

Hi David, It's a 12 foot-lap-sided clinker dinghy that was built at the Silva Bay Ship Building School down on Gabriolla Island, BC. Pretty fun little vessel.
The only month I can make it down to the JMT next year is July. It'll be my first time in the Sierras, so I'm hoping to keep my eyes on the majestic views and try to take the other stuff in stride as much as possible.

[drowning in spam]

Lots of not smart hikers are in that area. I spent a couple months up there this summer doing trail work and saw LOTS of them. Eventually I tried displacing my anger with humor. Humor in that these hikers would change out of their boots and try to find a log to cross a creek that was literally only half a foot deep. Humor in that they'd grunt and groan as I noisily went past their tent that they placed right next to the trail and creek crossing. Humor in that they were reusing a fire ring that I decided to break up at a later date, but had already peed in a few times. Ah…JMT hikers.

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