Trekking poles heisted from high camp!

[goatboy]

If anyone knows who "borrowed" a mis-matched set of trekking poles from the 9200 foot campsite below the Turtle Snowfield (below Camp Hazard) yesterday morning, please PM me to return them. It was a black Leki pole and an orange Black Diamond pole.

 

What a weird thing to come back and find them gone...

 

Thanks for any info about them.

[Off_White]

You probably talked them up to one person too many! No, no, I didn't follow you around and pilfer them, but I think you have convinced me to go buy my own.

 

I agree it's flat out bizarre to have gear disappear in the backcountry.

[goatboy]

You're right -- I TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for lauding the merits of trekking poles...so I may have contributed to the general population's desire to own their own by stealing mine.

 

Point well taken!

 

Maybe they were taken by a hungry

[Chad_A]

Wow, shitty. Never heard of that happening before.

 

Great, the Exit 38 thiefs are making their way to the flanks of Rainier.

[Fuggedaboudit]

Goatboy- sent you a PM.

[Kraken]

likewise, i found a blue BD trekking pole at the base of the serpentine arete on dragontail peak last week. its still there if it belongs to anyone here.

[JayB]

That sucks. A couple of years ago two friends of mine were flying out from Colorado to climb Rainier via the Kautz or the Finger in mid-June, with the intention of hanging out through 3-4 days of bad weather if that's what'd take to get a shot at climbing the mountain. Neither had much vacation time or money, so they were more than happy to hang-out of the mountain if that's what they'd need to do to get a crack at the mountain after investing so much time, energy and cash into the climb.

 

I figured I'd reduce the slog factor a bit by stashing a rope, some food, and fuel up there. I buried everything about 3 feet deep in a plastic bag behind the rocks beneath the turtle snowfield, and marked the spot with a wand. Just in case anyone got curious and/or the bag melted out, I wrote a note explaining when we'd be there, and asking folks not to disturb the cache unless it was a matter of life or death for them, sealed the note in a bag, and duct-taped it to the outside of the bag.

 

I was mighty dissapointed when we got up there and found the bag torn open and half of the fuel cannisters and some of the food gone. Thankfully for my friends, we had a great weather window, and there was no need to hunker down for any length of time - but needless to say I was mighty dissapointed and my friends were flat out disgusted. Very bad mountain karma for someone out there...

[Stefan]

When I was in Europe several years ago, we were climbing this peak. About 10 other people and me put down our poles in an area we switched to ice axes. (No we were not all one group, but all climbing the same mountain). There was this Zermatt guide and his Japanese client too...

 

Anyway, we came back down and found only my partners poles gone. We were ticked off.

 

So we get back to the restaurant which is the starting point of the hike to the climb, and we find the Japanese dude with my partners poles.

 

So we ask him what he the hell he was doing with my partners poles, and he said in bad English, "They were lying there, so I took them."