On our Festivus hike into a Humboldt Forest we got to the top of a ridge and were disappointed to find that someone had gone to a lot of trouble to haul a bunch of household items and trash up there to burn it all in an opening.
We usually carry some sort of bag to keep collected garbage in but this was far beyond what we usually deal with and more than the Safeway plastic bag could handle. We decided to continue with the hike and mushroom hunting for now and come back the next day with a 50 gallon heavy-duty “construction site” bag and see how much we could collect.
When we came back I also had a pair of nitrile gloves because a lot of the crap looked like it once held chemicals. I sent Willow away from the pile to go sniff around elsewhere and proceeded to collect as much as possible. One hours later I got it all in the big, tough bag and was happy with the outcome.
A bit of a pain in the butt but it was an excuse to get Willow out running around in the forest again which is one of her favorite activities and I am adding this to my Poop Karma© point totals since it smelled like shit.
Since not everyone practices the Leave No Trace mantra it is up to us more enlightened folks to pick up (pun intended) some of their slack. So, if at all possible please consider bringing a bag of whatever size with you for found garbage on your outdoor activities. Heck, I do that when SCUBA diving as well. Thank you for your efforts.