Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Micro chips in the wag bags

Hi Should the leader be the contact or each person sign for the bags? Some thoughts....

Leader

That way the leader can pick up the permit etc for others who aren't even there.

One time I went a day early to pick up a no-show/walk-in permit for the others for the trip. Since there was no assurance which day I'd get the permit, they didn't leave until they heard from me that I'd gotten it. Luckily I got it the first day.

RFID chips in the WAG Bags... brilliant. Give the Rangers a scanner and they can find out who it belongs to...

Bummer that they would still have to pick them up though.

Either. Leader CAN pick up all bags with the permit, but group members COULD each be accountable for their own bag IF they were present at the same time.

Or at least identify the RFID number of each bag so the leader knows who had each bag. Then if the leader was contacted about one of his bags left full on the mountain, he would know which of his so-called friends was a turd.

ha! do you prefer your trail side poo bagged or un-bagged is the question...

Not sure what this response means. Are you saying if the bags are tagged, crapheads will choose to just take a dump beside the trail rather than leave it in a marked bag?

Oh, I have a better idea! Have everyone swallow an RFID chip at the trailhead. That way the chip is in the poo, not the bag, and gets ID'd whether or not they use a bag!

There could be an easier and cheaper way... just add a barcode to that bag that can be scanned by any smart phone. Then when someone spots the bag they can scan it and find out who it belongs to and mail it to them.... or at the very least the rangers can charge a nice fee for the removal. I kind of like the mailing idea myself. Peronsally the leader is the one in charge of the group and I think they should be the one charged for the removal.

Or maybe just force a cork down every hiker's throat to plug them up for a day or so. Or maybe insert a cork into each hiker from the other end?

There is no Forest Service Order requiring you to use a wag bag, so forget the heavy handed enforcement crap. Because they circumvented the environmental review process, wag bags are just a voluntary system. Use them because there is no better alternative, but leave the corks in the wine bottle. We all hate seeing wag bags littering the trail, but that was an inevitable impact well described in the Environmental Assessment. It should be no surprise.

Bring back toilets and hire a private company to make a cleaning run once a week. It's been working fine for 30 years and [documented in a report on Longs Peak, Rocky Mtn NP in Colorado] at similar elevation as Trail Camp (12,000 ft) with similar heavy usage. If they can figure it out in Colorado, why not in California.

Doug...Are there really micro-chips in the WAG bags this year? Or is this all just tongue-in-cheek? Do you still have a box of extra bags at the store? When we head out for 4 days, it's sure nice to have more than just that one bag they give ya at the Visitor Center.

Hi Randuf In a civil society why would you need chips in the bags? Yes we still have bags in the store. Thanks Doug

Thanks, Doug. Yes, in a civil society we wouldn't need that. But, in the past, we've been known to carry down bags that were not ours. Sadly, some of us (even Whitney hikers) are not as civil as we'd like to think.

The cork-in-cheek was also a joke. The problems of wag bags, sadly, is not a joke. With 17,000 hikers each season (the capacity of a typical NBA arena), all it takes is a small percentage to cause a significant problem. Human nature is what it is and people gotta go. There have been lots of police enforcement ideas put forth on forums by people fed up with seeing wag bags littering the area. Bar codes, a deposit/refund/reward system, microchips, and even cameras have been proposed. Since the former District Ranger never completed the environmental process for the wag bag program, the enforcement options are limited. It seems un-American to me to solve a bathroom problem with police and courts anyway, but others might like that approach.

If you the read the 2010 report on backcountry solar toilets you'll see this problem of human waste has been solved very effectively in a perfectly civil manner with a 29 year record of success on a very similar heavy use trail at the same elevations in Colorado.

Thanks for cleaning up after uncivil hikers. I pick up errant trash but I'm not as nice as you about carrying their waste product.

9 of 'em on the trail last weekend... not microchips... WBs.