[at-l] Hiking Ethics

[thornel@attglobal.net (W F Thorneloe)]

Not necessarily. It is hard to make friends if you accuse them of condoning 
vandalism and criminal activity simply because they are not True Believers 
in the Great and Almighty Oz, or if you demean someone's mentor reflexively.

HYOH is not a license for abuse of the trail or of other hikers. The 
Fletcher quote appears to me to support this concept. No guide or set of 
rules is sufficient to determine what you are going to do on the trail when 
you get there. You will HYOH, whether you want to or not. If you try to 
hike the schedule or the guidebook or the party line, you will have the 
trail firmly correct the error of those ways.

The fact will remain that more fools, idiots and ill prepared folks will go 
out for a walk than expert hikers. There will always be the rotting poor, 
as some good book said. There will be times that we will be our brother's 
keeper at the most inconvenient time, as well as times that we would wish 
our brother would HYOH somewhere's else. The problem appears to be the 
intolerance of variety among hikers and people, and the surprised reaction 
when intolerance receives a raucous response.

OrangeBug

At 08:58 AM 6/15/2001 -0400, rick boudrie wrote:
>Which brings me to the question.  If it is OK for folks of their stature 
>to promote these kinds of ethics, why can't R & R and others do the same 
>without being told "Sit down, shut up and hike your own hike".  It also 
>brings me to the realization that talking about and promoting hiking and 
>backcountry ethics is no way to win friends.