Lodge visitors, Portage Trails and Abandoned Gear

I promised to take more pictures, I didn't say the photos would be of professional qualiity. The first pictrue was taken last friday during a hail storm. I was sitting at the computer posting paid bills when a cow moose and her calf walked by the lodge door. By the time I found the camera the moose were just getting ready to turn off the lodge road onto the trail over to South Lake.

Today,  a Forest Service patrol team stopped by and asked about a pile of camping gear that they saw when they went into Meeds Lake on Monday. They couldn't find anyone on Meeds Lake and nobody was using the portage trail.  They wanted to know if someone had picked up the gear or if it was still out at the South end of the portage trail. When they got back to the Ranger Station they found out that the gear had been abandoned and they called to ask me to go in and pick up the gear.

Since I hadn't been over this portage for a while I agreed to go in and retrieve the gear.   It was raining and the mile long entry portage was as long and difficult as I remembered.  I was told to take a large pack to haul the abandoned gear back out. When I got to Meeds Lake I found two sleeping bags, two sleeping mats, two pillows, one tent, two rolls of TP, a hammock, 5 gallons of drinking water (40 pounds), and a pile of throwing disks. On the hike back out I came up with several stories to explain how the gear got to Meeds Lake and what the people who hauled it in expected to find in the wilderness.



Gear greeting visitors to Meeds Lake



I brought everything out except the 40 pounds of water. I also found several great patches of raspberries that will need to be visited again in a couple of weeks.

 

Pack it in pack it out. In three words --- LEAVE NO TRACE

Gear hauled out to  Poplar Lake