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Comment by zucked | Hacker News Reader

Everything you wrote is bang on - please, please, PLEASE: Leave no trace. Haul out your garbage. Don't shoot, shit, or camp within 100 yards of streams, creeks, or rivers. Don't make fire rings where they already exist. Abide by fire restrictions that might vary by county. Stay on existing, marked hiking and motor vehicle trails.

As a resident of the West (which has huge swaths of "public" land) I am so tired of folks coming to "camp" on public land and just absolutely trashing the place. We're losing access to land because people can't be bothered to dig proper cat holes for their shit, pick up their trash, and they're just setting up semi-permanent #vanlife outposts. All these great free spots are getting overrun by people who have no common sense and slowly by slowly they're turning into paid, reservable spots.

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> PLEASE: Leave no trace

Someone once mentioned "Leave it nicer than you found it" as a life philosophy, maybe in relation to Japan? I'm not sure anymore.

I've taken to that, like when going for a forest walk, even if I pick up literally one tiny plastic wrapper, that's still leaving the forest better than I found it. Of course, pristine is pristine, but if there is trash, go for that good feeling and consider an easy thing to do that would improve the situation by any amount!

I know this one as the boy scouts rule: always leave the campground cleaner than you found it.

Kind of true for codebase too

Thoreau, in Walden, on borrowing an axe: "The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it."

A high school English teacher used this passage to impress upon us this same philosophy of "leave it nicer than you found it" (in particular, I remember him telling us that our parents leave us in his care and he saw it as his job to "return us sharper than we were received") and it's one of those rare moments that made such a deep impression on me I remember it often even decades later.

Thanks. Love what you've written here.

Always fill up the tank when you borrow a friend's car.

Yes, this. I take LNT very seriously, and when I am in an area where someone didn't, it's still on me to clean it up. If I don't, then I'm leaving a trace (not one that I caused, but a trace nonetheless).

Also, how many of those tiny plastic wrappers accidentally fell from someone's backpack side pocket or similar? You have to do a bit of "leave it nicer than I found it in terms of things I'm aware of" just to break even.

I picked up 4 pieces of trash today on the Fernwood nature trail in Ohiopyle, PA yesterday. It was every piece I saw on the whole loop trail, except one candy wrapper far under a bush right when we were leaving. I think i have to get that last piece tomorrow!

Re: Japan - Japan teaches this early, Japanese students clean their own schools.

Dutch too in high school. Is that not everywhere?

Though I've never questioned why that wasn't the case in primary or tertiary education here, so maybe it's also not that normal for us. It's somewhere between annoying and a punishment, not seen as taking care of your own stuff, maybe that's different in Japan / elsewhere in general.

At work I feel weird about cleaning personnel, as though we consultants are above vacuuming the place every once in a while and such (and they leave wiped desks dirtier than they found them, typically wiping my clean-to-the-eye desk with a dusty rag).

> Dutch too in high school. Is that not everywhere?

I've never heard of this in US public schools.

Also, you leave out (which the comment you mentioned does) - please respect local rules. For instance, in Death Valley, you can free camp most anywhere (refer to NPS guidelines) two miles off of a designated roadway.

Yes - 100%. There is zero excuse for not knowing/abiding by local rules/regulations. The USFS, BLM, and others have troves of information posted online.

A local area has gone to great lengths to put up signage stating that unlicensed off-highway vehicles are NOT ALLOWED to travel the main stretch of USFS fire road. So what are people doing? Screaming up and down that very road on unlicensed off-highway vehicles at 2/3x the posted speed limit. Shooting is supposed to be confined to specific areas with backstops - instead you've got dingbats firing off hundreds of rounds into valleys with NO BACKSTOP and they aren't even cleaning up their brass.

It's a goddamn shit show.

To add to all of this great info, to any prospective dispersed campers: please use high-quality, recent, ideally official maps of your choosing to ensure you're on the sort of land you think you are. Boundaries can change and notes on spots aren't always up to date. My area involves a mix of national park, national forest, DNR land, and private land, and I regularly see dispersed campers getting ticketed for unwittingly setting up on the wrong side of the (unmarked) park boundary. That's tame compared to what can happen if you're trespassing on private land.

That's a really good point. Although not every agency produces good dispersed campsite maps, they typically do have at least boundary maps on their website.

Avenza (iOS/Android app) has done all the heavy lifting - you can download area maps and your position will be shown correctly on the map if you allow location services. Most of the BLM/USFS land I've been to recently produce compatible maps.

The keyword (primarily for federal land) is MVUM. It stands for Motor Vehicle Use Map. It will be an awkward PDF. Green dotted will indicate trails you can drive on. If you can't pull off all trails to camp little dots will indicate where that's allowed.

BLM and USFS websites have horrible navigation. Just Google the name of the forest with "MVUM". You might also need to first Google forest name + district map and then Google MVUMs for the specific district.

Another option is the MVUM layer in CalTopo (the name comes from the fact it started as just CA, but it's national nowadays)

But try to be aware of what you're signing up for: Death Valley Germans [0]

[0] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...

For the curious, the subject area: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/35.9193/-117.0431&laye...

I spent 10 days in death valley offroading. You aren't signing up for that if you stay on trails, even ones that are marked for 4x4s. We did 700 miles INSIDE death valley, yet all on real dirt trails. Would I leave an official trail in death valley? No. Is it perfectly safe as long as it's not 110+, even if you have a mechanical failure? Yes.

If you've got water and shade, someone knows where you are, you don't have any underlying health problems, and you're not exerting yourself, then any dry heat on earth is survivable. The saddest thing about cases like the Germans in Death Valley is how most of the mistakes were made before they even entered the park, and how easily they could have been fixed.

You did read the bit where they believed they were on an official trail, right?

I've spent two weeks combined solo off trail just wandering Death Valley, and will say I could have gone much longer. There's a lot more water back there than people realize, and parts of the year are colder than they are hot. HOWEVER, as a close friend of a friend of the superintendent and someone privy to SAR details, I'm telling ya, even on trail (on road) it's just not a safe place for most people once it's over 95° or so. Forget 110°! Many people suck at decision-making, and even more so once warm and suffering electrolyte imbalances. The Germans were some of _many_ to perish in Deva.

That was a great read, thanks.

I’ve been going to DV for over 25 years at this point. Mostly backroads exploration. The moral of most of these tragedies is know what you are doing.

Even as late as the last couple of winters, idiots follow GPS guidance (Waze, google/Apple Maps) onto closed roads. Again, know your environment. If a major highway is closed, likely the minor side roads are as well.

> Don't make fire rings where they already exist.

I think you mean that we should only use extant fire rings and not make new ones?

No, in a lot of areas when you are dispersed camping you are allowed to make fire rings. You could be camping 20 miles deep into the woods. There will not magically be a fire ring there for you. However, if there does happen to be a fire ring close by, use that one and not create a new one.

One of the many idiosyncrasies of the English language.

The sentence

> Don't make fire rings where they already exist

means both:

1. If there is an existing fire ring, do not re-use it. Make a new fire ring somewhere else instead; and

2. If there is an existing fire ring, please re-use it. Do not make a new fire ring somewhere else instead.

What they _meant_ was the second interpretation, and not the first one.

This took me a while. I think the #1 is what most people would understand.

I understood #2: if there is a fire ring, do not make another fire ring (implied: use the existing one).

I understood #3: "Just don't make fire rings anywhere because nobody knows anymore. Even the archaeologists aren't sure where the old ones came from."

Besides, we're down to like, what, 4 days a year where the fire risk is low enough? Bring a camp stove and a LED candle :)

Pretty much this for much of the US.

Fire risk is just too high, even if rings exist. Use a camp stove. If you really want a fire pit, go to a non-dispersed/non-backcountry campground that has nice large fire pits in cleared areas (still not zero risk, but less risk than some of the janky small rings I’ve come across).

I like the stupidly literal interpretation that you should not make a fire ring exactly in the same spot as an existing fire ring, but that any other spot, even abutting an existing fire ring, is permitted.

> Don't shoot, shit, or camp within 100 yards of streams, creeks, or rivers.

Folks who've never shit in the woods before may have some trepidation about it. There's a classic book on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Shit-Woods-4th-Environmentally/dp...

The Internet Archive has the 2nd edition:

https://archive.org/details/howtoshitinwoods00meye

Relatedly, assume all water sources are contaminated and filter before drinking. Giardia is no fun.

> Don't [...] camp within 100 yards of streams, creeks, or rivers.

Why? Alligators? I keep away abit because of the humidity. But I have never thought off it as a rule?

This is to not disturb animals who depend on water access at night as well as avoiding contamination of water sources.

It's because of the risk of contaminating the waters (with human waste like urine, food waste, etc.)

Also, if you camp near a water source, you may be unknowingly denying the local wildlife from accessing it.

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