Mt. San Jacinto: Not a Large Stairmaster Covered With Plants

[cynthia23]

Long post, but it is important, so please read!

On Saturday March 23 I went up Skyline. I left late—8 am. I was hoping someone would have already taken Crazydude's gas tank (if you don't know what I'm talking about, please read my previous Crazydude post) but alas no—the tank was there. I poked through his stuff. It seems to me he has been up there recently as the water has been drained, I found what seemed to be a fresh cigarette butt, and I also found, a few feet down the trail, a fresh empty gallon water bottle. I bungeed the tank onto my already overloaded pack and humped it up another six thousand feet.

At Long Valley I turned the tank over to Ranger Eric. The good news: he told me the valve was open and there was no gas left in it. The bad news: it wasn't a propane tank (i.e. for camping cook stoves), it was a propane TORCH.

I wondered why he would camp with a propane torch. I asked my friend George who is a Palm Springs cop. He said crackheads and tweakers use them for vaporizing their coke/meth and getting every last bit of value out of those expensive little rocks.

Of course, it is possible that Crazydude carries a propane torch around because in his spare moments up there he likes to work on arts and crafts projects. (Perhaps he's soldering his mom a lovely handmade copper necklace for Mother's Day.) Or, maybe this is just a fast way of drying his nail polish. Or, perhaps he's that rarest of creatures, the gourmet homeless schizophrenic, and he's using the torch to make crème brulee.

Or, maybe we need to face the facts: there is a crazy crackhead on the mountain, high up in a tinder-dry canyon, smoking cigarettes and inhaling death drugs via a blow torch.

Now, we can hope for the best—that Crazydude, although so tweaked out that he climbed 6000 waterless feet in the wrong direction--will still, somehow, remember to adhere to the rules of Fire Safety. That he is carefully stubbing out those cigarettes and always remembering to not aim the blow torch at a dead bush after he takes a hit of speed.

Or, we can admit That Something Needs To Be Done.

Here's what I think we should do: take the rest of his stuff. This will at least discourage him from camping there, if he indeed does come back. Yes, maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, so to speak. Maybe he's not ever going to show up again; maybe he hasn't been there since October and I'm just imagining the signs are fresh, maybe the torch was for something innocuous, maybe he's dead or in jail—or maybe, come July, when he gets out of jail, he'll climb up there with a fresh tank of propane and some crack, set up his tent, smoke his brains out and accidentally set fire to the dry grasses he's camped on via his torch, crackpipe, or cigarettes. And the July southeast monsoon winds will send the flames straight up the canyon and all the way up into the pines and burn up the whole mountain….

This scenario is not implausible: homeless tweakers around the valley have started numerous blazes, most recently near the Murray Peak trailhead. Normally, their campgrounds are relatively close to the city and the fire departments are able to quickly put them out. That is obviously not the case in the Shady Slope; if it was midweek, a fire probably wouldn't even be spotted for many hours. Look how quickly the Snow Creek fire spread last year. We have had less than ½ of an inch of rain this year! I have heard San Jacinto might be closed this summer because the fire danger is going to be so high.

Look, even if Crazydude has not come back since October, chances are, someday or the other, he's going to come back for his stuff, and probably, he will still be a crackhead. The evidence suggests strongly that at least once, this lunatic sat in a thicket of dead bushes at 2500 feet and smoked rocks with a blow torch. Twice is one time too many.

We can hardly expect the P.S. police dept to set up a surveillance at 2500 feet or send in the Blackhawks for one solitary tweaker, and both Eric and George basically said that we were unlikely to be able to get the BLM, the Indians, the P.S. fire department, or any official anybody to come up there, It is basically up to US. US=me plus YOU.

My suggestion: sometime in the next two weeks (before it gets impossibly hot,) a couple of us (2 adequate, 3 good) hike up there with plastic garbage bags, gloves, and bungee cords. We roll all CD's junk up, stuff it in the bags, bungee it onto our packs, and hike back down. Saturdays are generally preferable for me, but I will consider/can schedule a weekday or Sunday if that's the only days someone else can do it.

Will it be Fun? No. An Athletic challenge Which Will Improve your best Skyline time ever? No. The right thing to do? Yes.

Lecture/rant here, but I feel it needs to be said (NOT to any individual, just as a general reminder): Mt. San Jacinto is not a large stairmaster covered with plants! Yes, I believe in personal athletic challenges (that's what Skyline is all about for me) but always in partnership with the needs of the wilderness and other people. At the risk of going all woo-woo, I do believe our mountain is a SACRED PLACE, which both the Indians and Whites regarded as spiritually powerful. God is up there, and treating his holy places like mere exercise equipment will really come back to bite us, either spiritually or even physically (it does seem to be the case that people who treat wilderness disrespectfully often seem to end up having terrible "accidents".) But even worse really is becoming dead INSIDE. We don't want to turn into those sickos who walk right by dying people on their way to "triumphantly" summit Mt. Everest. Our personal athletic goals never trump the needs of wilderness or other people. Here as I see it are our proper priorities in their proper order:

1. The Safety of ourselves and other persons.
2. The preservation and safety of the wilderness and all its related creatures and beings: animals, birds, plants.
3. Our personal and exercise goals.

I'm sorry cuz I know I sound pompous and many of you reading this have so much more knowledge and mountain experience than me, and have so kindly taught me/helped me in so many ways on so many days. But I do feel strongly that for the safety of the mountain and ourselves we should do our best to get rid of Crazydude—even if it does take time away from "real hiking". I am a 110 lb middle-aged woman with tendonitis. I cannot haul all this crap down the mountain by myself. Also, leaving aside the physical impossibility of me hauling all this stuff myself, there is also a safety concern. George was very perturbed by the idea of me, alone, miles from any help, stealing a paranoid tweaker's stuff. If he is lurking around—and though he's probably not, what if he is??—it would surely piss him off. It's hardly a great idea for a single woman to be out there alone repossessing a tweaker's gear. I ain't Rambo, folks.

So who is gonna step up to the plate and volunteer for this not-fun garbage pick-up day? I will throw in a bonus though—whoever joins up with me, the beer afterwards at Matchbox is on me ….
(okay, one round, at least …)

[KathyW]

Cynthia -

I'd be happy to help with the clean-up.

Kathy

[Perry]

I doubt he will be able to stand the heat. Stimulants, even caffeine, make heat very difficult to handle.

[cynthia23]

Hopin' you're right, Grandmaster P, but of course, he might show up this week, when it's a nice and cool 70 (but still tinder-dry). Don't get me wrong, it's probably 99 percent certain the guy will never be seen again, or at least never start a fire--but with such a potentially catastrophic result, even a 1 percent chance seems too high to me. So, I think it's good to get his stuff out of there.

Kathy W--thrilled to have you aboard the garbage truck! What days were you thinking?

Now, all we need is one big strong man to come and ride shotgun!

Gentlemen? We're waiting ....

[Perry]

It's not dry any more. It's raining and the mountain is surrounded by clouds. This might be a decent storm.

[guest]

Hi Cynthia,
I feel, like you, the importance of respecting Mother Nature, the planet, and all things on it.
I also believe the potential fire concern should be taken seriuosly, as many can be careless.

I do think that the whole crack idea is speculation, although possible.
I checked the propane tank a few weeks back, and found it empty, and did not feel like hiking it all the way up.

This guy may be such a rookie, he carried it to warm things, like food in a pan, it's not that hard to do.
So, considering the law of attraction in action, fear & speculation (however well intentioned) can draw more of the same, even if the dude is "off".

I appreciate your effort to help maintain this great trail, and I'll continue to help as well.

Thanks,
ss

[cynthia23]

Yeah, Guesty, definitely agree it could well be an innocuous thing, but would have to lean toward the tweaker interpretation just based on the other homeless tweaker-types who frequent the lower portion of the trail. Some are just homeless/harmless but it does seem fair to assume a fair proportion are drug-users, and in this case the torch, and Crazydude's very strange behavior, do strongly suggest drug-abuse.

Bottom line--there's definitely no harm in getting rid of his stuff, and it could be an important/vital thing to do. I just keep thinking about the Snow Creek fire--or any of the recent big fires really--and how easily one clueless person can start something truly huge. Yep, Webmaster P, yesterday's rain will dampen things down--for about a week. Or just enough to get a few plants growing, which will promptly die and dry out ...

Look dudes, I'm not trying to be the nag/mom of the trail ("Boys! Clean that trail NOW!), just am worried about this guy and somehow have a bad feeling about him ...

[Cy Kaicener]

Thanks Cynthia for keeping us informed about Crazydude. I wonder if the bulkier items would fit into a regular Kelty pack. He must have used his own pack to drag the propane cannister up there.

[cynthia23]

Hi Cy! There is actually not that much stuff: a tent, pegs, sleeping bag, and several plastic bottles. If it was compressed/rolled up it would fit in one large backpack (it fit in his, originally), I just have safety concerns about any one person carrying an unwieldly load down Skyline, which as we all know can be treacherous even when you are unencumbered. So i think it's safer to break it into a couple of smaller packages.

[KathyW]

Cynthia:

How far up is the stuff?

Kathy