Grab your bear can or camp chair, kick your feet up and chew the fat about anything Sierra Nevada related that doesn't quite fit in any of the other forums. Within reason, (and the HST rules and guidelines) this is also an anything goes forum. Tell stories, discuss wilderness issues, music, or whatever else the High Sierra stirs up in your mind.
I see many poorly dismantled fire rings. Some blackened rocks still at the fire ring, others nearby, the ring remnant still full of coals, coals spilled from the ring cover the ground nearby, even some aluminum foil remaining.
I try to dismantle them in such way that one wouldn't know that there was a fire ring, except if looking closely (it is impossible to get all the small coals out). It takes time, perhaps 20 min for not too large ring. Unfortunately, I often don't have time for this.
Fire ring at 10800 ft WSW from Donohue Pass, dismantled last year.
What's a good way to report locations of illegal fire rings, so that rangers may find them and dismantle them (or finish dismantling poorly dismantled ones)?
Are the pack-train folks allowed to have fires in the areas marked "No"? The reason I ask is that this past summer, we trekked some pretty well-trodden paths out of Agnew Meadows. On the River Trail, we came through two packer-campsites, both of which were uphill of the no-fires signs and had fire pits that contained relatively fresh charcoal.
The lower of the two had a series of logs stacked about the area, presumably for seating, a stone firepit and a full-sized shovel tilted against a tree. The higher of the two had a rock "living room" constructed around a rock-walled firepit that we used as a cooking station.
Up at lower Clark Lake, on the north side, there's a big packer camp, and it's got two established fire pits, along with frying pans, a stash of hay under a tarp and etc...
I cannot believe that our Rangers don't know about these, and the observation above is legit: when one sees the well-established, openly visible, obviously "current" fire rings or pits, one thinks "maybe this IS okay up here".
mokelumnekid wrote:
... At the center of the peace sign was a small plastic container with a pair of women's (very, very teeny) underwear from Fredrick's. There was also a note on purple paper about what let's call it a girls mountaineering club. ...
... I'll post pics and a trip report in due course...but YIKES!
