Clean up duty

[Paul Wagner]

As a part of my commitment to do more trail work in the Amador District of the El Dorado National Forest (just South of Tahoe) I spent a day hiking and cleaning up the trail to and from Lake Margaret.

This is a popular trail, partly because it is almost walking distance from the Kirkwood resort…so lots of visitors take advantage. And it’s an easy hike. I met one family of five doing the trail with a four year-old, and another backpacking group with four kids all under the age of twelve.

But there are issues. I cleaned up way too much TP on this trail. For some reason, people seem to think that leaving TP under a rock, or burying it in shallow and light duff isn’t going to be a problem.

It is. And it makes the whole scene quite unappealing–especially for those hiking with young kids. There were a couple of campsites here that were disgusting.

Meanwhile, the same kids were probably responsible for the more than 100 cairns I knocked down. There were cairns on the ends of logs that had been cut through for the trail. There were cairns immediately across from each other on both sides of the trail. There were cairns next to cairns next to cairns, and there were cairns built on top of cairns.

I knocked almost all of them down, as per USFS policy.

Still, I had a nice hike, met some lovely people, and left the place better than I found it. All in a good day’s work.

[Paul Wagner]

The Ten Essentials needs go to eleven, to include a ziplock bag. I am sick of seeing (and now cleaning up) other hikers’ TP! Here’s a more in-depth rant:

https://www.backpackthesierra.com/post/the-ten-essentials-updated

[R L]

And a set of chopsticks.  That brings it to an even dozen.

[Kevin Babione]

Other than hiking above treeline in the White Mountains, we typically don’t see cairns here in the east (at least where I hike).  Is it clear to hikers at the trailhead that building cairns is a violation of LNT?  I can picture all of these well-meaning people (not just kids) building cairns to help future hikers stay on the trail.  As long as the cairns are alongside the trail it’s clearly not malicious – just annoyingly stupid.  I’m guessing that the cairns multiply exponentially:  1, 2, 4, 16…A bit of classic “monkey see, monkey do.”

[Paul Wagner]

My last work crew, in the Clavey watershed with the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, showed me that OHV campers are far worse than backpackers. Forget TP–we had diapers and open latrines. We filled in one, and took out the other. You guess which is which.

[Bonzo]

We filled in one, and took out the other. You guess which is which.

You guys packed out an entire latrine?  Damn… that’s hardcore cleanup…

😉

But for seriously: I’m glad that someone dislikes cairns as much as I do.  I break them down whenever I see them, and people always seem to give me funny looks.  When I explain things, they usually relent, but some still don’t see the harm; idly, I wonder if they’re the same ones that build the cairns in the first place, and that create open latrines.

[Author]

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