As most of you know, the Perseid meteor shower occurred over the weekend. The meteor shower peaked on Saturday night, but the conditions were cloudy and there wasn't much to look at.
I figured there would be some stragglers the day after like there usually is, so I hiked into a nearby lean-to with one of my buddies to check it out.
The Perseid meteor shower occurs each summer as the Earth passes through the distant tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet. The ice and dust from the comet enter the Earth's atmosphere at more than 100,000 miles per hour and burn up. The debris burning up upon entering the atmosphere is what we on Earth see as shooting stars.
My friend and I hiked into Fishbrook Pond in hopes of staying at one of the two lean-tos up there.
This didn't happen. We got a late start, and by the time we got to Fishbrook Pond, both lean-tos and the first campsite were occupied. We hiked around the pond to the other side and found a fire pit to post up at.
We pitched our tents, went for a swim, and ate some rice and beans for dinner. At about 10:30pm we headed over to one of the lean-tos to get a better view of the sky. We sat on the rocks in front of the lean-to for about an hour watching the sky and saw 15-20 meteors! It was really cool!
The next morning we went over to the lean-to to thank the guy that was staying there for letting us hangout in his 'front yard' the night before. The man had been in the area for 2 days, but had just gotten the lean-to the day before. There were quite a few people up at Fishbrook Pond over the weekend, probably because the gate is open and you can drive right up to Dacy Clearing.
The man told us that he got to the lean-to on Sunday morning, and found it trashed. There was garbage everywhere, it took him all morning to clean the place up. We offered to carry a bag of garbage out with us when we were leaving, as we were travelling a little lighter than he was.
Who does that? You carry your stuff into a lean-to and then just leave garbage everywhere for someone else to clean up? We all share these lean-tos in the Adirondacks, and they are awesome! I'm sure if this particular spot wasn't so accessible that these people would have never ended up there in the first place. I don't know, maybe it's time to close that gate for good. Adding another mile or so to the hike is probably just enough to keep people like that away from the area.
Hopefully next time I go for a hike I'll only have to carry out MY OWN trash, but honestly I'll pick up after the small number of idiots every time if I need to.
I would feel more guilty leaving someone else's garbage in the woods than they probably would themselves.
