Do you hike up Baker Mtn? Do you bike the Rail Trail? Do you aspire to be a 46er? How about climbing Denali? Do you fish, hunt or travel outdoors for any reason? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then this column’s for you. It’s about the Leave No Trace Principles.
I first learned about Leave No Trace on my first NOLS course in 1970. Wilderness educator Paul Petzoldt called it Practical Conservation. Some called it Minimum Impact Camping.
But the name Leave No Trace took hold and it's the idea that when we travel outdoors, we should attempt to leave it as natural as possible.
What triggered the need for Leave No Trace practices? People, more people, and even MORE people traveling into the wilderness. The expression “Loving the outdoors to death,” comes to mind and is accurate. Until the 1960s you could leave your garbage, cut down trees, and leave your human waste, and since so few people traveled outdoors, by the time the next person came along all signs of your mess would have disappeared. Using his legendary irony Paul Petzoldt once said, “I was an early leave no trace camper. In the 1930s when I was done eating, I threw all my tin cans behind the bushes.” In the Adirondacks they even had garbage pits behind lean-tos encouraging people to leave their garbage behind. In my travels I’ve seen everything left outdoors including the proverbial kitchen sink.
Then came the sixties, the designation of Wilderness, and the back-to-nature movement.
Leave No Trace, or a version of it, was a part of the National Outdoor Leadership School’s curriculum since its inception in 1965. By 1987 the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management recognized the need for these conservation practices and cooperatively distributed a pamphlet entitled “Leave No Trace Land Ethics.” Eventually the agencies and NOLS partnered with others. In 1994 Leave No Trace Inc. was created. It provides a set of practices people can follow to minimize their impact on the environment. Soon after I got my first Leave No Trace certification.
Leave No Trace has a complete curriculum including videos. Check out their website lnt.org
Their first Principle is Plan Ahead and Prepare. It seems simple enough. Similar to the original Boy Scout motto Be prepared. It has what you could call twelve considerations. The number of people in the outdoors who follow all twelve are rarer than Methodists at a mosque.
Let’s start with the basics.
● Know the regulations and special concerns for the area you’ll visit.
This seems simple enough but given what I’ve seen, people either don’t know the regulations or don’t care to follow them. Rules like; “Do not litter” “Carry out what you carry in” or, “cutting of live trees is prohibited,” are so routinely ignored it seems they don’t exist.
● Visit in small groups. Split larger parties into smaller groups.
Try to keep your groups small and know if there are group size limits where you hike. For example, the High Peaks Wilderness Area has an overnight group size limit of nine and day hike group size limit of fifteen.
● Repackage food to minimize waste.
I try to minimize the potential for accidental litter. If I can rebag my 4 granola bars into one bag, I’ve left 4 granola wrappers at home that could be accidentally littered.
● Prepare for extreme weather, hazards, and emergencies.
Most of the day hikers I encounter are no more prepared for an emergency than Captain Edward Smith was prepared for the iceberg. A classic story on preparedness, or lack thereof, was the guy on Noonmark Mountain who didn’t have a flashlight and got caught in the dark….and again a month later. People constantly tell me, “I don’t need a flashlight. I’ll be back before dark.” To which I reply, “That’s what every person rescued after dark tells the forest ranger.”
There are ten essential items you should always have with you. (https://dec.ny.gov/things-to-do/hiking/hike-smart-ny)
You don’t carry them because you will need them. You bring them because you MIGHT need them.
● Schedule your trip to avoid times of high use.
If everyone did this there'd be no times of high use. The more experienced you get, the more you’ll value avoiding times of high use, although it may be impossible to do that on weekends and holidays.
● Use a map and compass to eliminate the use of rock cairns, flagging, or marking paint.
I’ve got a better chance of winning the heavyweight boxing championship than seeing most day hikers with a map and compass. If they do have a map, it’s probably on their phone and many who have a compass don’t know how to use it.
I’ve seen so many people who seem to think the words “be prepared” don’t apply to them that I know Forest Rangers will always have job security.
In the computer age with apps like All Trails, Gaia, and Strava, finding places to hike is easier than a walk in the park. But I wish people would spend half as much time on the Leave No Trace website as they do on their Where to Hike apps: They need to study HOW to prepare for a day hike as much as they study WHERE to go on a day hike.
Let me finish with one suggestion. Since cell phones are ubiquitous, and many think that if they have a phone, they don’t need a paper map or a flashlight. Wrong on both accounts. If you are going to depend on your phone, keep in mind that just as important is a 10,000 mAh charging brick. During your hike you will probably use your phone as a GPS, a flashlight, and a camera. These activities will drain your battery quicker than a Donnelly's ice cream cone melts on a hot summer day, thus making it useless in an emergency. I recommend keeping the phone in airplane mode during the day AND having a charging brick in case of emergency.
Lack of preparedness causes lots of accidents, injuries and sometimes even death. I never want you to become one of these statistics – and I’m sure you wouldn’t either.
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