I would hope that the Forest Rangers and other folks up here (Prescott
NF) as well as Coconino and probably Tonto NF's would be so busy
focusing on the threat posed by all the dead pine trees, and what is
being done to get rid of them to try and prevent a horrid fire season,
that they wouldn't have time to worry about a few people walking thru
a few sticker bushes for a few "abandoned" boxes. Priorities!!!
(grin)
Trisha "Lightning"
Prescott
On Thu, 23 Jan 2003, "Team Tierra Buena" wrote:
Message
I guess this would be my
question too. It would seem that more people engage in other types
of activity
that would cause more problems than geocaching. In other words, I
can tell my
friends that he/she should hike to this really cool,
off-trail location
that I found in a National Forest, but if it's posted on a website
as a
geocache then it's against the rules.
I think you've probably nailed the heart of the
matter here. In theory, you shouldn't be encouraging your friend to
go
off-trail either, but unless your friend a) takes you up on your
suggestion, b) gets caught, and c) watches too many episodes of "Law
and
Order" and decides to drop the dime on you, you're never going to
have any
repercussions from your suggestion. We DO break some rules, and then
we tell
the whole world exactly where we've committed our
infractions.
Either way there is a possibility of a
new trail being started as people find out about this location. I'm
not sure
of the difference. Isn't geocaching (in National Forests) just
hiking with a goal of finding the cache.
If the rest of the world was as honest and morally
upright as we Geocachers, we could place our caches right on the
edge of the
trail, and non-cachers would just leave them in peace for us to
find, and
probably none of the land management agencies would care about what
we're
doing. But reality is different.
If the concern is new trails being
started, then wouldn't they just have to ban hiking altogether?
There are those who would do just that.
I'm not trying to stir things up,
but this kind of doesn't make any sense. I certainly understand the
need
of the rangers to protect our National Forests and I appreciate
their effors,
but it seems like they are trying to correct some issues by banning
a
very small (in comparison to other activities) group of people.
Small but rapidly growing. To some extent we may be suffering
because of the ATVers, and I'm not blaming the ATVers. There are
many
land managers who feel that because their agencies didn't react to
the
explosion in popularity of those machines quickly enough, their
lands were
overrun, and they're not going to repeat that mistake with something
that's
growing as quickly as Geocaching. And the easiest (not necessarily
the most
effective) way to control something is to prohibit it.
Just some thoughts.
Good ones, all.
Steve
Team Tierra Buena
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"Although no one can go back and
make a brand new start,
Anyone can start from now and
make a brand new ending."
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