High Sierra Topix

SSSdave wrote:
Maybe people mainly because they are so emotional, do not have the interpersonal skills to confront people anywhere including those at their workplace or elsewhere in their everyday lives. But some of us who can do so calmly and intelligently, can and I hope that includes some reading this.

Maybe it's because we don't want to get shot. At least with the 20 something group, i knew what i was walking into. The girl was the fire tender. And I saw them during the day before, and talked to them.

You don't always know what you're walking into. Even the calm and intelligent get hurt doing the right thing.

[quote="Maybe it's because we don't want to get shot. At least with the 20 something group, i knew what i was walking into. The girl was the fire tender. And I saw them during the day before, and talked to them. You don't always know what you're walking into. Even the calm and intelligent get hurt doing the right thing.[/quote]

Quite agreed. One needs to have a good sense of who where and when confronting others not only in the backcountry but also in our daily lives. Only a fool would try to tell something to a much larger person in a group talking in the evening dim parking lot of some west Oakland bar. Even something tame like "I notice your car is missing licence plates". But the same person confronted at midday inside the SF Giants AT&T park during a ballgame is likely to smile when one asks them if they can use the empty seat next to them for a friend as long as no one comes. In the backcountry, I would not tend to confront a group of loud rowdy young twentysomething males but most others would in some way even if I would expect they are not going to like it.

A few years ago at the Darwin Canyon lakes in Kings Canyon National Park, two os us set up camp down under some whitebark pines. A couple of other small groups set up camps within the area. Later in the afternoon some obvious peak bagger with gear set up his tent a dozen feet from the same lake edge we were at probably because of the view. He was a tall lean 6 footer plus maybe 30 years. I'm a short thin 66" guy of 140#. I came by carrying my 4x5 on its tall tripod and from a distance of several dozen feet found him standing about near his tent. In my usual strong though calm voice I said, there are some legal campsites, (pointing to an area of whitebarks) over there. Then continued walking where I was going. He was obviously annoyed I had said anything but my walking away didn't give him the opportunity to say anything. A half hour later he was still there but two hours later was he was gone from the area. I figure he probably kept thinking about it stewing then pissed off got up and moved but didn't move far, maybe setting up camp likewise illegally at one of the other lakes. But the confrontation would over time sink in making him wonder about others talking to him about what was likely a common in your face I can do whatever I want to attitude.

Fire rings for the most part are pretty silly. If one is building a fire in an appropriate location (no combustibles within several feet), a ring of rocks serves no purpose unless you bring a cooking grill and I was thinking those days were over, but maybe they're not? Though as someone mentioned, it does establish a semi-permanent location for future fires.

And that may be exactly why they are being removed; if there is no ring, I suppose many people will be less apt to have a fire, which may be the ultimate goal. But this is purely speculation. I didn't realize the general public was removing well established, legal fire rings, that is a lot of dirty work.

Even as an ex-ranger, I still regularly break down and clean up illegal fire rings. In some cases (though rarely) I'll remove legal fire rings in remote locations where the fire ring itself is an obvious one time use and is the only sign or impact in the area.

While a fire maybe "legal" in a certain area, it's a shame to establish new rings, especially in remote locations. It's so easy to have a fire, yet leave the area with no sign.

I've busted up a few, but not many. Usually when I'm camping at a spot where there are too many. One place had 4 rings; two larger and two smaller. I broke up the two smaller ones and left the two larger ones that were well established. The place only really needed one, but the larger ones would have taken far too much effort to eradicate, so I opted to leave them remove the two I could leave without a trace.

I ran across a few in Tehipite Valley that were unusable, overgrown and near the river, but they looked to be about 100 years old, so I considered them historical and left them alone.

I've seen many in the high country that are obviously illegal, but if they are at a hardened site, I normally leave them.

I've actually seen a few rings that show no signs of ever being used. Like someone just built it for fun.

RoguePhotonic wrote:I've actually seen a few rings that show no signs of ever being used. Like someone just built it for fun.

Yeah.. that is Sasquatch. He doesn't know about fire but he knows about rocks. Lures people into a camp by offering up a ring, and has a stockpile of stones just out of camera range to throw near you when you camp there.

did you mean Jimr? And we are all kind of the fire ring "cops" if we care to be. If they are in an illegal area, they should go, based on whatever cop system you believe in.

I have seen campsites with so many rings it looks like a battlefield with shell craters all over. Some only a few feet away from each other! Why didn't the builders just use the existing ring instead of building new???? I dunno, maybe the rocks were not arranged feng shui or something...

In those case I may destroy all but one -- leave the safest one on the most durable site.

I rarely have a fire, but when I do I search the fire ring first. Who knows what is buried in the ashes? I once found a .30 cartridge buried in the ash carefully arranged pointing directly at a log where someone would be sitting. Also found partially filled butane cartridges buried in the ash just waiting for someone to build a fire. There are some sick sadistic sociopaths in the backcountry.

When I get to an established camp I usually remove two plastic grocery bags of ashes, and dispose of discretely, and remove the usual aluminum foil for packing out. That way I figure I am not adding more ash to a fire pit.

When I'm cross country and I come across a fire ring that lightly used (like once) I usually take the time to dismantle it before moving on.

There have been cases where an area had a number of fire rings but I just built a new one. One example is when I stayed at that odd camp site on Whitney Creek. Not sure if that is some old hunting camp or something but the main area with the structures showed signs that fires had been broken up in the past which I wasn't sure why. When exploring the whole area I found some other pits in random areas that did not offer any good camping. A couple of them had been filled in with more rocks for some reason. So I did my typical thing of selecting the best site and sitting on the cut downed tree made into a seat and stretching out my legs to note the optimal location from the seat to place it. Then I rolled some cut logs in the area by it for seats. Pretty much turned it back into a major camp site. Maybe some people don't like that but considering there is a metal box and some sort of cooking platform with concrete in it and a large table pretty much makes the area as disturbed as possible.