Clean camp sites on public land

[gila_dog]

I remember a time when any place you could car camp on public land was trashed out. But, at least around here (SW NM) things have changed. Now it's rare to see a trashed out camp site. A new generation of campers seems to have replaced their slob parents. I'm not sure why that has happened but I'm sure glad to see it. The camp sites I'm talking about are informal camp sites along the back roads. Places where people have been camping for hundreds of years. There are almost always rock fire rings, and some left over firewood, but rarely any trash. What's the official term the USFS/BLM uses? Disbursed camping? Things may be different in official campgrounds, but I rarely use those places.

IMG_2200.JPG

IMG_7050.JPG

[rhjanes]

The farther out of cities, the better it seems to me. Our local (City) trail, I about gave up hiking it. For 1/4 mile from any trailhead, it looked like a dumpster fell over. Worse I saw was some long distance runner who passed me with about three water bottles on him. An hour later I'd reversed my hike and here he came, with just one bottle left. Half a mile later, there was one of his bottles thrown down. Another mile, there's another one. And this wasn't near the trail heads. Someone should smack him and tell him his mommy isn't following him picking up after him. I picked up the trash. Out on my National Grasslands hike, out in the country, it is very rare to see much trash at even the unofficial camp sites. Occasionally there's a smouldering fire left. I've put some out and the FS Volunteer rides around on his ATV with 30 gallons that he puts in a pump and puts out the fires when the FS notifies him about it.
Maybe people are getting aware that they need to clean up after themselves.

[Hang Williams]

I've noticed it seems much less of a problem out west than here in Georgia. I've certainly found a few trashed out campsites when I was out there, but they tend to be cleaned up and returned to natural unless they're riverside picnic spots that get a ton of day use. In Georgia, on the other hand, I've seen areas that I cannot fathom how that much trash can even be generated on a camping trip. 4 full contractor bags left leaning up against a log, 2 of which had been ransacked by bears and raccoons clearly months prior to me finding it on top of the mounds of trash elsewhere in the site that they didn't bother bagging. 7 day stay limit, how the hell do you make that much trash?

[gila_dog]

It could be that if people show up at a clean campsite they feel obligated to take their trash with them. If they show up and it's already trashed, they just add more to it. I dunno. One problem we had during the early days of covid was all the urban refugees coming out on weekends and throwing their trash around, and leaving their toilet paper blowing in the wind. It's like these people just don't know how to behave when they get out of the city, where somebody cleans up after them. The campsites around here that I'm seeing are mostly used by hunters in the fall. A few people use them during the summer too, but hunting season brings out the most people. There was a campsite across the road from my house where a big hunting party showed up and stayed for about a week. I went over there during the day when they were all gone and took pictures of their license plates. I was sure they were going to leave it all trashed out and I was going to go and complain about it to the USFS. But when they left I went over to check it out, and the campsite was all tidy and clean. No trash in the fire pit even. I've seen people over there in other years since then, and they always leave a clean camp. There are other popular campsites around here that it's the same story. So I'm pretty happy about it.

[KBr00ks]

Not much trash at the campsites I've been to lately -- PA, WV, VA. Either clean or just a few things that looked like they had legitimately been forgotten/dropped and not seen.

There may be fewer people using them post-pandemic, but I hope it's a change of behavior and/or realization that these places don't clean themselves.