Trashing the Wilderness

[Scott P]

This kind of thing makes me mad. Hopefully bringing attention to it will do some good.

Apparently a commercial group of about 55 people from Camp Gladiator camped three days last weekend at Willow Lake in the Sangre de Christo Wilderness (max group size is supposed to be 15).

Report is that they didn't bury and feces and crapped right next to the stream in addition to leaving a huge amount of toilet paper all over the place.

Some comments from other hikers that were trying to visit the area. Each comment is from a different group or individual that was unlucky enough to meet the Camp Gladiator group.

This group was not burying human waste. To put it nicely, I find this to be very disrespectful to nature and other Willow Lake campers.
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Our group happened upon that horrid mess too... Ick!
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My wife (Sarah) and I had the inconvenience of camping directly below that group on Friday night, and the conditions were appalling. The smell wafting through our camp site was foul. I took photos of the mess, including bare feces within 12-inches of running water in Willow Creek. I tried warning those camping below the mess to filter water upstream.
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I confronted several people in their group about the gross neglect on their part. One person, whom I suspect was one of the guides/organizers (but who told me they were not part of an organized group, which is a lie), said he would talk with the people in the group about the issue. Another person, whom I happened to catch in the act, retorted angrily that toilet paper and feces are biodegradable and that I should mind my own business.
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I too was a witness to the disgusting aftermath of this behavior this weekend. I stumbled upon a huge pile of s**t and toilet paper while trying to find a good campsite. If it had only been a few pieces, I would have packed it out with my own... However, there were literally hundreds of pieces of toilet paper, and it would have filed my whole backpack :-& I had never experienced anything like that and it truly pissed me off. I talked to one of them briefly while I was heading up to Willow Lake and they were heading down. They tried to convince me to join their group...
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The largest mess was below the waterfall which exits the bottom of the lake. There is a fairly large, open meadow on the south side of the trail and north side of Willow Creek. The group was camped in this meadow, and their primary defecation point was just down stream of the meadow and about 10-feet north of Willow Creek. However, this was NOT the only location of toilet paper and unburied feces. I think the primary defecation point became so vile that they started dispersing to other areas. Upon returning to camp after hiking all day on Saturday, we even found a fresh deposit just a few feet from our tent.
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Keep in mind that we're talking about ~50 people who were in the area for 3 days. That's roughly 150 exposed piles of feces with accompanying toilet paper. Add to this the toilet paper from each time a female urinated.
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Here is their video of the trip:

http://cglive.tv/cg-adventures/mountain ... re-part-1/

Some of their quotes from videos:

"Look at all DESE tents. CG Nation taking over the mountain"
"whoooos mountain? CG's Mountain!"

*"We decided to take 55 people in a charter bus from Austin, TX to Lake City, CO and we're climbing two of Colorado's most prominent 14ers.
So we've got people sprawled out.
There's probably room for 10 tents and we've got 30.
Um, probably room for about 15 people and we've got 55,
but that's how we do things CG-style."

(edit, adding source) -- CG Co-Founder Jeff Davidson

Also, they have done this for at least four years in a row now, and the videos are all pretty similar.

Entire thread on 14ers.com in case anyone wants to read:

http://14ers.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t ... 51#p499151

[Byron]

I've said it several times before...these pilgrims are just clueless when it comes to dookie. The guides are mostly to blame for this, in my opinion. They should have brought in 4 or 5 five gallon buckets and set up poop stations...like on river trips.

Unfortunately, I've noticed that most people get uncomfortable when the subject of human waste comes up. That's really too bad...because one thing I've noticed is that they're doing much better at packing out their trash. Back in the 70s and 80s, they would just leave it all over the place, or half burned in a fire pit. The trash factor is much better now, but the duke issue remains.

I said in the "dog" thread earlier that I usually don't bother saying anything to these idiots, but if I had come upon this scene while they were there, I would have brought down what I call the "Black Curtain"...and that is about as rude and obnoxious as you can possibly imagine.

Oh well...I paint houses for a living, and believe me, half the people in this country are absolute pigs. Wadda ya gonna do, huh?