High Sierra Topix

I've been bagging peaks all summer, and registers that were signed by friends were gone as close as 5 weeks later.

Merriam/Royce - found canisters, but nothing in it. Snwburd and group signed it early Aug, Calhiker signed it a few days later. By Sept it was gone.

Hilgard - Snwburds group signed in in early Aug, when I got there in Sept I only found the empty silver can

Julius Ceasar - Calhiker signed it in Aug, gone in Sept. Maybe someone moved it and it was buried in snow, but I looked at his photo, and I know I looked there.

Pilot Knob - Sierra Challenge, one of the guys left his map for us to sign. Nothing in the register.

San Joaquin - found the piece of wood and old pencil only. Snwburd had a picture from '01 or '02 of the register on that piece of wood.

Gibbs - no register . . . Others reported no register also

Barnard - Bishophiker saw old signatures as far back as the 30s in Jul '03. I was there July '04 and it was gone. We looked for almost an hour.

Others missing: Williamson, Trojan, Tunnaboro (empty can), Feather. . . . heard Morrison's register is also gone. . . Baldwin's entries started ~June of this year . . . .

Yes, the situation with the missing registers is widespread and some of the missing registers go way back.

No register on Starr and that one was just replaced a few months before it was taken again.

Hmmm. Interesting. The bad news is no one's really in charge of them. If someone's interested in following up on this, the best bet is to call the Sierra Club and track down whoever does the upkeep -- I think they're the only ones who take some responsibility for them. Another thought is to try someone in whatever that split-off group from the SC Peak Bagger's section (can't remember their name, though I run into them all the time) based in Southern California and see if their members are noticing this as well. If it's just a couple of individuals, maybe comparing notes, you can figure it out.

Were it to go that far, I'm not even sure what the vandals (if any) could be charged with. Maybe vandalism of government property, just because there's an informal but long lasting agreement with NPS and USFS.

Anyway, good luck. I can bring it up with the other b/c rangers at Sequoia Kings in the spring. The loss of the older books, if that's what's happening, would be annoying.

George

Southern CA summit registers "managed" by the Hundred Peaks Section of the Sierra Club go missing all of the time. I always try to take a couple containers and notebooks with me when I go hiking.

Based on email exchanges I've had with HPS folks, I'm not impressed with their idea of "managing" the registers. They love to have the HPS name attached to them, but they don't seem very proactive in maintaining them. Their list of missing or insufficient registers is rarely updated. Plus, they don't want anything to do with archiving old registers.

There was a discussion a while back on summitpost about missing canisters. It's an intereseting read.

I had planned on replacing the missing canister on Carson Peak last month but was weathered out on the day I had set for the task. So come spring I plan on putting it in place. Unfortunately the snow will most likely destroy the unprotected register.

When I planned this I spoke to the ranger for the area and asked about required permission and such. He was unaware of any policies or any "responsible party." I was told they did not see any harm with someone placing a new register on the peak.

Based on that discussion I would venture to say that there is no organization that "manages" the summit registers in the Sierra.

I think it's the Sierra Peaks Section of the Sierra Club that "manages" those registers.
I'm really surprised to hear Snow Nymph's report that Royce and J. Caesar are gone -- they were there in late August when I was there this summer (Feather wasn't, though).

It has reached the point where it is a pleasant surprise when there IS a register on a peak these days. It really sucks that some self righteous a-holes take upon themselves to remove them. If they don't believe in registers, the solution is simple: ignore them and don't sign them.

A box/jar/can stashed in a rock pile is hardly a blight on the environment.

I agree Gator. Does anyone know if Mt. Emerson still has a register? It did about 20 years ago.

In the past I searched a bit in the usual mountaineering forums and generally on the web trying to find a discussion about why whomever(s) might have a reason to remove the registers. But have never seen anything. That in itself is odd because often people on some kind of mission that grates against the rest of culture are iften eager to proclaim their reasons to the public. And of course the internet is an easy way to do so even if one does not want to be traced. Anyone can log into computers in public places as libraries and post once anonymously. From this I would speculate, the perpetrator(s) is a local mountain person of little means that has probably never even touched a computer. They have probably little education and are generally ignorant about much that is considered acceptable. They might even be at odds with the mainstream mountaineering community due to confrontations about something totally unrelated. They love the mountains and our apparently avid peak baggers. They don't like those who abuse the environment. Unfortunately in the case of summit registers they have created some ridiculously stupid reason for not liking them just as many people of small reason do in life. I would hope that the mountaineering peak bagging community does something to nail the person(s). Given all the missing cannisters it would seem they would be able to put some clues together if there was cooperation about information. These days many folk have small digital cameras. If peak baggers made a point of simply taking pictures of others they see climbing peaks, even those at some distance, sooner or later this person(s) might be captured and that could lead to an ID. ...David

There was a thread on summitpost a few months back on the topic. Apparently someone came across a couple of guys claiming to be rangers (they weren't in uniform) and the were "directed by their supervisor" to remove summit registers. This led to someone phoning the "supervisor" to check out their story - which I recall was bogus (yet they were in fact rangers).

Go figure.