“Climb
the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into
you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own
freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop
away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”
― John Muir, Our National Parks
Something
I do pretty much every day I'm out is break down or "naturalize"
illegal campfire rings. In the Hoover there are certain lakes you can
never have fires at, other areas where we have elevational fire
restrictions and in ALL areas of our Wilderness they are not allowed closer than 100 feet
from trail or water. Currently, we are in fire restrictions in the
backcountry so no one is allowed to have a fire in the backcountry in
our district right now, we only allow stoves with on/off switches. If you want a campfire in our district you have to
go to a developed car camping camp ground. It's pretty common for much
of the Sierra Nevada to be in that type of restriction during the summer
months. If we find campfire rings in the backcountry that WOULD be
legal IF we were not in fire restrictions, we generally leave them so
they can be used the next winter/spring when fire restriction in the
backcountry is lifted. So I don't knock down every ring I find. I spread the ashes, toss the rocks away and cover it up with some dirt!
Simple enough but sometimes can take awhile especially if there's lot's
of ashes and/or rocks. This one pictured was at least 10 buckets full of ashes before I got level with the ground.
Here's a weird one....my co-ranger Cara was in this drainage the other week and found graffiti on a tree (who DOES that?!). I was assigned the drainage she had that past week so I took a little hatchet and chopped off all these folks' names.
I write out incident reports for the illegal fires rings and other stuff (abandoned property I found last month, evidence of people cutting switchbacks, used toilet paper laying around etc etc). These get entered in some database so they can see where troublesome areas are and what needs to be considered (ie: the fact that it is legal to bury your used toilet paper when it really should not be).
When you bury your toilet paper, animals come and dig it up, yuck.
Monday I spent some hours lopping out a section of trail we call "the tropics" it's a never ending battle. I started work at 7 to try and beat the heat but it was still super hot
unnamed pond north of Robinson Lakes
Little Slide Canyon and "The Hulk" a 1,000' beast with climbing routes
