From the impacts we have been seeing on Rainier lately however, it seems as though many are not familiar with how to adapt their LNT practices to the alpine environment, or they don't know LNT principles at all. Here's a run down of how to apply the seven principles on Rainier and other alpine areas.
1. Plan and Prepare
- Do your research on the route, climbing permits, and climbing fees a head of time.
- Know and practice your skills before you get on the mountain (from your layering system to navigating in whiteouts to crevasse rescue). Skills are perishable.
- Bring a GPS unit or have it on your smartphone with the maps of the area already downloaded. Have extra batteries.
- Please don't hike on our beautiful alpine meadows, or camp on them. The flowers are beautiful and easily destroyed. Stick to dirt, rocks (though watch out for the lichen too), or better yet, snow (the least impactful surface).
- Please don't camp next to water sources or go the bathroom near them! How would you feel if someone peed in your water source?
- Pack it in and then Pack it out. This includes your food scraps, gum, and dental floss. We've been picking up piles of rice, granola, noodles, and chewed gum at Camp Muir and Camp Schurman. We have thousands of people passing through both camps every summer. How gross do you think camping there would be if even half the people left a small pile of food? Would you ever want to come back here if you saw that? It does NOT biodegrade up that high and in the snow. It just melts out and rots. We rangers work hard to keep that mountain clean, but we need your help.
- Human waste: If you are not going in our toilets at the high camps, then you should be packing it out. You can't dig a cat-hole and bury it in a glacier and expect it to disappear forever. Guess what, it just melts out for others to see and accidently step on, and the rangers have to clean iit up. Again, thousands of people climb the routes on Rainier every year. Do you want to dodge piles of poop as well as crevasses? I doubt it. Rainier would become a biohazard in no time if people didn't carry their waste out. Bring your blue bag or wag-bag and aim for the bag or pick it up after like you would your dogs' poop. Bring extra blue bags so that you have enough. There's no excuse not to pack out your waste.
- Millions of people pass through our National Parks every summer. It's so awesome to have people coming out and showing their support of our wilderness areas by enjoying them. But if even a quarter of those people took a souveigner from the mountains, meadows, or woods we would have less flowers, awesome small rocks/fossils, or pinecones for future generations to enjoy (and wildlife to eat!!). Snap a photo of those awesome things you see so that you can remember them later.
- This one is simple in the alpine. No fires are allowed in the alpine. And good luck finding something to burn while you are up there.
- That being said people sometimes do find things to burn in the subalpine and that is no good either. It destroys nutrients deep in the soil and it takes a long time to replenish for vegetation to grow there.
- Do we also need to mention the fire hazard in many areas this year? Do you want to be the one responsible for starting a forest fire? Have fires only in officially designated areas and check if there is a fireban first.
- We want wildlife to live as they should in the wild and to be dependent on themselves. If they habituate to people, they become dependent on us, eat what they should not (get sick), and then starve in the winter months when no people are around and they didn't build their own stashes of food or forgot how to forage for themselves. Bears become agressive when they are habituated to people. They are then considered a "problem bear" and are sometimes killed because of it, even though it was really the fault of "problem people."
- Moral of the story? Don't feed wildlife, whether it is directly from the nuts in your hand or the food scraps you left at camp.
Super important, especially when climbing in the alpine and here's some tips to make your climb (and others') more enjoyable.
- Watch out for bottle necks on routes-try to space yourself out from other parties when leaving camp on busy nights.
- Be careful when traveling on loose rock (keep your rope short) so you don't knock rocks off onto other people or knock rocks onto yourselves.
- Be self-sufficient and prepared when you come on Rainier so you can prevent an incident. If things do go south, have the skills and equipment to care for yourself and teammates so you don't pull other people into your incident and endanger them.
- Parties late into the night at the high camps? This is inconsiderate to those who need to get up early for their climb.
Please, help us keep our mountains looking pristine to provide an awesome climbing experience for all to have.
