Re; [at-l] camp impacts vary

["Bucky" <mfuller@somtel.com>]

Thomas McGinnis wrote:

[...]

>  Oops. Almost forgot to disagree on other point: "Pig-campers" tend to 
>  be very lazy, and not only camp nearer to roads, nearer to trails if 
>  they *do* hike, etc., etc., BUT ALSO tend to *NOT* want to *work* to 
>  create a site from scratch. They'll harden the easiest site they can 
>  pick out (which is perhaps what OrangeBug has said), but if a stretch 
>  of trail denies them easy pickings as far as finding a campsite, 
>  they'll quite going to that trail as "too hard." 

A couple of points:

In the Whites anyway, most of the "illegal" sites are alongside
streams and above the 8' treeline. Unlike long distance hikers,
your typical pig camper's destination is a stream or mountaintop
rather than a campsite or shelter. Obliterating the established
campsites doesn't remove that which draws people there in the first
place. This problem isn't analogous to the shelter issue, IMO.

You also have to distinguish between summer and winter pig campers.
A lot of the trash and fire remnants I've seen along the trail in
the Whites were obviously made by winter hikers. I'm betting that it's
much harder, if not impossible, to deter "illegal" winter camping
since they do a lot of work anyway to establish their site (they're
not lazy, so you can't use inconvenience against them), and they
may not even notice a site's obliteration under the snow cover.

[...]

>  (Getting really philosophical, now that the coffee is hitting.) And 
>  just imagine what they might think when they eventually come across an 
>  LNT brochure somewhere.
>        "Hey, 'Turn over and distribute/replace fire ring rocks. 
>        Scatter and bury ashes and coals..." That's just what 
>        happened in the Whites at that campsite last year! That 
>        wasn't vandalism, it was 'Leave No Trace.' Whoa... Cool!"
 
It'll never happen.
    
>  Sloetoe
>  (who truly hates the piggies, but knows that "There, but for the 
>  Grace of God, go I!)

Don't denigrate your own free will and ability to reason.

--
mfuller@somtel.com; Northern Franklin County, Maine         $
The Constitution is the white man's ghost shirt.  }>:-/> --->


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