Bill Meyer, hike team member living large with Parkinson’s, had this to say about living large with Geotrashing.

From a young age as a  Boy Scout hiking in the North Cascades, we were taught  “Pack it in, Pack it out.” I’ve always come back from trips with other peoples’ trash and felt good leaving a place cleaner than I found it. This goes for river camps as well as trail camps.

I categorize trash as micro, mini, mid-sized, maxi and mega-trash.

• micro-trash: items that are barely visible
• mini-trash: small items like a candy wrapper, orange peel or TP
• mid-size trash: beer can, plastic bottle, old tennis shoe
• maxi-trash: the maximum size trash one person can reasonably carry out
• mega-trash: larger than maxi

I always pack out some kind of trash, most of it micro, mini or mid-size.Once when I was young and had some muscle, I packed out of the Selkirks in Northern  Idaho, the hood of a Volkswagen Beetle that had been dragged up the trail to use as a snow sled. I’ve ended float trips with as many as 8 tires on my raft. On another hiking trip on the West Coast Trail of Vancouver Island with my son Eric, we each hiked out with a huge tower of mid-size plastic items tied to our packs.

In the 60’s and 70’s, there seemed to be a lot of trash, especially if you were within a few miles of a trailhead. But as each decade has passed, I’ve noticed less and less trash and more and more stewardship of the back country.

So while some people are having fun geo-caching, I will continue to have fun geo-trashing and always leave the backcountry a better place.

Bill Meyer

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