Photo Friday: October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween everyone!

In honor of the slowly-but-surely-progressing case against the Creepytings National Parks Vandal, I wanted to help show the world that although there are some bad people out on the trails – there are far more good people volunteering their time, money, and elbow grease to help make sure our parks and green areas stay as pristine as possible. To that end, we’re urging people to reclaim the vandal’s hashtags on social media by posting images of their trail work or volunteering instead of the offending graffiti (The featured photo is of the Mist Trail in Yosemite, where one of the graffiti images has been removed).

This week, our friends at CLIF Bar have offered to give some Seasonal Flavor packs to our three favorite images – but we had a lot of really EXCELLENT submissions. So if yours didn’t make it this week, keep ’em coming. I may be able to get some more goodies for you next week, too!

First up is the photo that inspired this idea – a shot from A. J. Soria on one of his routine cleanups of the trail to Hermit Falls in Santa Anita Canyon. He and a friend hauled out a few full trash bags



A hiking group in the San Gabriel Valley noticed that some of the trails they were hiking had a little too much trash on them – so they decided to start calling themselves the Trashyhikers and have spent the last few months picking up trash and recyclables along their hikes. Here’s a shot from their most recent Monrovia Canyon trip, but they’ve also helped clean up the Sam Merrell Trail to Echo Mountain and Eaton Canyon recently. Thanks!

And finally, we found a tweet from Rodrigo of his friend helping to pick up trash in Zion National Park, one of the places the Creepytings vandal struck.

Congratulations to all three of you – and to the many other people who sent in their own photos of trailwork, clean up, and volunteering. I’d love to see some more photos next week, too – post them to Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #modernhiker AND either #creepytings or #CaseyNocket to help keep the conversation going on the larger issues of trash and vandalism in our parks – or submit your photos to the Modern Hiker Flickr Pool.

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by Casey Schreiner

Founder and Editor of Modern Hiker, Author of "Day Hiking Los Angeles." "Discovering Griffith Park," and "Cloud Spotting." Walking Meditator, Native Plant Enthusiast.