Duct Tape Trail Markers

I was on Mt. Wilson near Telluride today and picked up 74 pieces of neon green duct tape that was being used as trail markers. The tape was stuck to rocks along the side of the trail, apparently all the cairns weren't enough. Has anyone ever seen this before? Hopefully this is an isolated incident and not a new trend.

Duct Tape Trail Markers
Duct Tape Trail Markers
Duct Tape Trail Markers

Perhaps some what thinking that adding the duct tape would turn the cairns into ducks. Props for cleaning up the tape.

I hope the hansel & gretel that left the bread trail understand why their crumbs were nipped up this time...

Lame!

I pulled a pile of green flagging off of a trail in Tuolumne Meadows a couple years ago, placed along the old Cathedral Lakes fishing trail (which is also the main approach to Medlicott Dome). Definitely placed by hikers not climbers since the flagging continued past all the climbing up to the lakes.

But luckily for both of us….in both cases the guilty party didn't bring spray paint:

Photo of orange markings spray painted in Yosemite in 2006 which were painstakingly removed. Photo by Ken Yager.

That was in Yosemite - link to the full thread on Supertopo:

supertopo.com/climbing/thre…

As a student ecologist, I gotta ask you guys to be careful when you're pulling flagging off trees or rocks in an effort to pick up trash. Once in a while, ecologists and geologists have very good reasons for leaving flagging around the forest.

In an effort to clean up your crag, you might accidentaly be destroying someone's PhD project.

That said, an ecologist should post a sign somewhere to let people know what's going on. And I would guess that most of the flagging left in the woods isn't science, but the remnants of someone's shenanigans.

Anyways, just be aware and use good judgement. I think the op was right to clean up the duct tape. I just want others to know that those apparently random ribbons of flagging may not always be random.

Anson Call wrote:As a student ecologist, I gotta ask you guys to be careful when you're pulling flagging off trees or rocks in an effort to pick up trash. Once in a while, ecologists and geologists have very good reasons for leaving flagging around the forest. In an effort to clean up your crag, you might accidentaly be destroying someone's PhD project. That said, an ecologist should post a sign somewhere to let people know what's going on. And I would guess that most of the flagging left in the woods isn't science, but the remnants of someone's shenanigans. Anyways, just be aware and use good judgement. I think the op was right to clean up the duct tape. I just want others to know that those apparently random ribbons of flagging may not always be random.

fair amount of irony I believe for an ecologist to opt for litter rather than stack cairns next to any marked project they need to do....

Derek Jf wrote: fair amount of irony I believe for an ecologist to opt for litter rather than stack cairns next to any marked project they need to do....

Right. I totally see your point. Unfortunately, it's usually not practical to build and maintain hundreds of cairns. Good scientists use minimally invasive techniques in the field and always clean up after themselves.

Honestly, your chances of running into an ecologist's flagging or whatever is so small it's probably irrelevant for me to even bring this up. But, as a guy who has his fair share of flagged aspen trees out there, I just thought people should be aware.

Anyways, I didn't mean to hijack this thread. Good on the op and Greg Barnes for cleaning up after irresponsible recreationists. I think you can usually tell when the flagging is simply marking a trail or a rendezvous or whatnot.