Be careful about removing tape …
I do a lot of volunteer trail maintenance / rebuilding / rehabilitating in a National Park that has extensive wilderness and non-wilderness areas. I often go into the Park to mark with tape (flag) locations along trails where volunteer crews will arrive a week or two later to do their work. If the flagging is removed and I’m not there to oversee their efforts they might not know what they’re supposed to do and where they’re supposed to do it. I would hate having them waste their time on a fruitless work trip because someone had removed flagging I had placed to aid them in their work. Sometimes it’s hard enough just getting enough volunteers interested in trail work - we don’t need to discourage them.
There ARE legitimate reasons why you might find marking tape in the wilderness. The National Park Service - one of the strictest agencies when it comes to what you can and can’t do on their lands - permits this for very limited purposes.
Don’t remove flagging just because you personally don’t like seeing it out there. It might be out there to make the wilderness a better and more accessible place for you and others. Try checking with knowledgeable people first. If the flagging tape is obviously old and faded it’s probably safe to remove it. If it appears and feels new it might be best to leave it. We do remove it when we’re done.
Tape
In my area the marshes are tidal. A tape which you could easily place at mid or higher tide would be nearly impossible to remove when the tide was lower. You would probably have to walk through 2 foot deep mud exposed by the falling tide.
fpharris, I believe people
can see the difference between the work you do on TRAILS (I don’t believe you put tape up in pristine untainted locations) and the tape that they place themself in marshes. How can you explain the request I had from the RANGER for asking me to remove tape?
It does not take a rocket scientistist to figure out where a tape is called upon (your work) and where is
plain trash. I ride mtb and I come across tape where work will be carried over in the near future. Yes, I’m not stupid enough to remove that one.
When I see it in the wilderness where has no right to be there (when Joe Blow puts it up) you bet I will remove it.
You said it yourself:>>The National Park Service - one of the strictest agencies when it comes to what you can and can’t do on their lands - permits this for very limited purposes.
so why do you put it there
in the first place?
If you are not even going back to it?
Taj. If you read his statement…
about the removal of said tape requested by a ranger then by all means he should remove it. Rangers from the Hillsborough River State Park, upon hearing of my plans to remove litter from the 17 runs on the Hillsborough River asked if I would remove marking tape as well (and yes the HRSP has juristiction of that section). Reason? It’s a pristine primative swamp that they would prefer to keep the traffic on it to a minimum, when travelling through such an area who wants to see the scenery ruined with bright tape everywhere? There are canoe trail signs that are black, white, and tan interspersed every 100 yards or so along the main channel. Stick with that channel and you’ll be okay. I’ve paddled it when there were not markings at all and made it through just fine. Night paddling at that time was not for the faint of heart!
I whole-heartedly agree w/ gnarlydog; If you have to ruin the scenery of a pristine area by putting up tape that park rangers don’t want there to begin with then you shouldn’t go there.
Why not try learning through experience? Go early in the morning because you know you’ll make mistakes but that’s how we humans use to learn. Then you’ll have no need for tape. So you get lost a few times; Rely on the brain cells that God gave you and you won’t need tape, or a GPS unit, or an electronic compass, and once you get through it a few times you won’t even need a magnetic compass.
Just by the talk on this message board I see a pattern of how more and more people are becoming more reliant on battery-operated electronic marvels instead of their brains. The sad part is once you become reliant on such “toys” and it quits functioning and you don’t have a back-up plain you’re either screwed and/or dead!
I thank God for me having a dad who taught me how make it through any part of the Florida Wilderness on my own and all without electronic gadgetry and for the most of it even without a compass of any kind except the sun or stars. You folks better learn these lessons or there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from your loved ones.
gulfcoaster, do you realize that
you are a minority?
It’s an uphill battle trying to educate the average person that uses the outdoors.
The “tape” is just the tip of the iceberg of this alienated society that can’t see anything wrong with visually polluting and demising the experience of the wilderness, believing that they have full right to mark the trail to overcome their ignorance (intended benevolently here) and shortcomings when it comes to navigation skills.
You seem to have a sound upbringing based on self reliance versus gadget dependence.
But TV tells us everyday that you need all the “stuff” to be safe while at the same time ill prepares you for a real situation.
How much more enjoyable is an outing where it seems that nobody else is or has been there before.
If a person can not feel this than obviously I am wasting my time here.
Solitude is something that humans do need from time to time.
In a black and white world
and where a ranger says, “Take tape down,” sure, go for it. In the real world, where anything can and does happen in the wilderness, you have to develop good judgement. Electronic gadgets can fail, compasses and maps can get lost, white-outs happen, and even the most experienced people sometimes do stupid stuff. The wholesale attitude of “if I see tape I remove it” can be reckless and endangering. A more mature individual would be cognisant of circumstances.