Folly Peak, NW Face

[Backwoods]

Great report. You wrote "snow, boulders, and branches – the kind of tiring terrain". It sure is rewarding terrain when you look back on it though.

[cynthia23]

Great TR--very clear and detailed--and an awesome achievment. I can't believe how fast you guys moved.

I'm really, really curious about those gas cans--how could they possibly have gotten there? ? Did you see any signs of an old road, ATV-ing, etc? It sounds impossible for any vehicle to have accessed. Why would anyone carry them in? Do you have any speculations?

[DaddyLongLegs]

I'm really, really curious about those gas cans--how could they possibly have gotten there? ? Did you see any signs of an old road, ATV-ing, etc? It sounds impossible for any vehicle to have accessed. Why would anyone carry them in? Do you have any speculations?

Those two cans were the ONLY signs of people we saw on the NW face. There are no roads or trails there.

My current theory is that the cans were dropped from a helicopter in soft snow -- that would explain why the cans were mostly free of dents and scratches.

[cynthia23]

But why would anyone in a helicopter be tossing down cans of gas? Unless maybe somebody was logging there? That seems implausible though ...

Another theory, only slightly more likely--'back in the day', before water was sold in plastic jugs, I think it wasn't uncommon for people to wash out and reuse various kinds of cans to carry water in, including, I'd guess, gasoline cans. In that case, they could have been carried up there by long-ago campers. Did the cans seem that old? As in, thirty to forty years? Hard to believe they'd stay intact that long, though.

If the cans seem newer than that, another possibility, maybe, is it has something to do with the illegal 'green gold' that was being grown down in Snow Creek. Maybe they had a plot up near where you were. The 'farmers' leave a lot of weird trash behind.

What do you think? Too bad you can't carbon-date the cans ...

[zippetydude]

Cynthia, are your last initials SI ? (CSI) You seem intrigued by this. My wife likes solving mysteries and unexplained happenings. I'll ask her for her theory.

Some of these things intrigue me as well. Like the plane crash on the east face of San Gorgonio. Were they hit by a sudden powerful downdraft? Otherwise, how is it that the pilot would not have kept his altitude at a minimum of 15,000 feet or so, knowing that an 11,500' wall was just ahead of them.

A different, slightly less dramatic mystery - Two years ago, my daughter Natalie and I were walking several miles from the nearest trail in Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite. Looking down, she found a 1947 dime, pure silver, only slightly tarnished, and probably unmoved for 60 years. How on earth did that get there?

These mysteries only enhance the wilderness experience for me - I'm always wondering what I might find next.

z

[bluerail]

I love coming across stuff out there....we've found things easily over 40 years old still intact.

I'm still going with firefighters gas.....they dont always have time to gather there stuff, and the rust looks like it could have come from the heat of a chapparal fire...otherwise, i would say the cans surface would have even still been in better shape.

[cynthia23]

That sounds like the best guess, bluerail. I hadn't thought of that ...

Zip: yes, I do love mysteries! I'm always hoping to find something weird in the wilderness. Your 1947 dime sounds like a real treasure! Did you keep it?

My coolest find ever was in the spring of 2005, while wandering (lost, again) in Tamarack Valley through melting snow, I picked up what I thought was a 'funny-shaped rock". When I got it home I saw that it was worked stone and was actually a broken spear point. I eventually gave it to then-ranger Erik Hansen--they were surprisingly excited about it, because they hardly ever find any Native American artifacts that high up (apparently the Cahuilla didn't go that high up very often, viewing it as dangerous and unproductive. Hm. ) They sent it out to an archaelogist and I think it's currently in their collections somewhere.