nartreb wrote:Alaska. Misty weather. Following a riverbed. I'd like to say we were days from any civilization, but in fact we were only a couple of hours from the road, planning to hike into some nearby hills before finding a campsite for the night.

At a bend in the river where the gravel formed terraced banks up to ten feet high, something sticking out of the gravel. Something with antlers. Something very dead. The head, neck, and shoulders of an elk, partly mummified and mostly skeletal, perfectly upright. Probably the creepiest thing I've ever seen.

Pic? everyone's talking about some pretty cool stuff, maybe my favorite thread, but we haven't gotten too many pictures of these things lately.

A dead bison and an elk skeleton with one antler on it in Yellowstone.

I'm a geology and geography nerd. I'd have to say that one of the coolest things I ever came across was a group of guys looking for an old benchmark from the 1850s Baseline for the 6th Principle Meridian Survey. They found it while we were chatting with them. The history and search for it is documented here:

http://www.amerisurv.com/PDF/TheAmericanSurveyor_Penry-RockyMountainHigh_December2006.pdf

I was one of the hikers that stumbled across these guys and took the group photo. Not really exciting for anyone but a complete nerd, but I thought it was pretty cool.

We set up camp just as it was getting dark so didn't have time to look around the area very much. The next morning I found the skeletal remains of two dead horses scattered around the edge of the campsite. 2-Water bottle and 1 hiking pole sitting neatly beside a stream crossing. 3-A cows skull, with no other bones to be found anywhere. 4- IPOD, fully functional with mostly music that I like. 4- Forgot to put in the case of beer I found sitting in a dry stream bed on South Balface (if you can call Busch, beer). Popped one and it was awful. 5- Bottle of Champagne on the summit of Mt Langley. That was tasty! 6- A toy shark, about 5 inches long, on the Flume Slide trail in NH. It's been on the dash of my cars for 6 years. 7- a worn pair of Merrill hiking boots, size 10, but still in decent shape

OK. Are you ready? I'll let you be the judge for what is the "coolest" thing...

A garbage bag of Playboy mags, a dead cow floating next to our dock, an oak wooden swivel lawyer's chair, 4 gorgeous orchids, a 6' dark stained wooden bookcase, a working HP Laserjet 5, a diningroom table, a 6x5' map of the US mounted and framed, an orphaned baby bunny that we fed kitten formula for 2 weeks and then released it, numerous deer skulls, a dead giant snapping turtle, a huge dead owl, a pottery barn wooden dresser, a filing cabnet, a stereo, a radio, a swivel chair, a high chair, a carseat, 2 aluminum ladders (huge), numerous books, a five dollar bill, a tomato plant, a cactus, an oriental watercolor with wooden scroll, a dead great blue heron, a dead turkey on our dock, numerous tools, enough mittens to fill 4 garbage bags (literally), enough hats to fill one garbage bag, a bag of never worn RL mens polo shirts and ties all with tags, a nice wooden TV stand, a leather ottomon and club chair, a fountain for a garden, a bird house, a bird feeder, about 40+ bicycles, a Patagonia black wind jacket, a LLBean large canvas bag, leather straps and crampons for climbing trees, chemistry, physics, math books, a seriously old typewriter, a 12x12 floating wooden dock, outdoor metal furniture, an injured kitten on the side of the road which is now our cat.

Well, YOU asked!!!!!

As you can see, my husband rides his bike home from work, passing numerous college campuses along the way. (I found the playboys, the bunny and the kitten. )

In 2007, I got lost bushwhacking down the side of Oventop Mountain in Shenandoah National Park and found the remains of some sort of old building. I was on what was obviously some sort of old trail that was obstructed with greenbriar and blowdowns. Someone had once lived up on Oventop before it became part of the National Park.

I saw a snake eating a frog in Prince William Forest National Park a few days ago.

In 2001, I found the courage to overcome my fear of heights in Bandelier National Monument. It meant climbing 135 feet of wooden ladders and worse, climbing back down again. At the bottom, I was badly shaken for a couple of minutes, but after that I felt a lot better.

In the 70s I was shown a Norman Clyde stash in the Palisades . It was off-trail and consisted of a full-size metal garbage can full of stuff that he had picked up in the backcountry over the years. I was told that there were others in the Palisades.

tigerlilly wrote:OK. Are you ready? I'll let you be the judge for what is the "coolest" thing...

A garbage bag of Playboy mags, a dead cow floating next to our dock, an oak wooden swivel lawyer's chair, 4 gorgeous orchids, a 6' dark stained wooden bookcase, a working HP Laserjet 5, a diningroom table, a 6x5' map of the US mounted and framed, an orphaned baby bunny that we fed kitten formula for 2 weeks and then released it, numerous deer skulls, a dead giant snapping turtle, a huge dead owl, a pottery barn wooden dresser, a filing cabnet, a stereo, a radio, a swivel chair, a high chair, a carseat, 2 aluminum ladders (huge), numerous books, a five dollar bill, a tomato plant, a cactus, an oriental watercolor with wooden scroll, a dead great blue heron, a dead turkey on our dock, numerous tools, enough mittens to fill 4 garbage bags (literally), enough hats to fill one garbage bag, a bag of never worn RL mens polo shirts and ties all with tags, a nice wooden TV stand, a leather ottomon and club chair, a fountain for a garden, a bird house, a bird feeder, about 40+ bicycles, a Patagonia black wind jacket, a LLBean large canvas bag, leather straps and crampons for climbing trees, chemistry, physics, math books, a seriously old typewriter, a 12x12 floating wooden dock, outdoor metal furniture, an injured kitten on the side of the road which is now our cat.

Well, YOU asked!!!!!

As you can see, my husband rides his bike home from work, passing numerous college campuses along the way. (I found the playboys, the bunny and the kitten. )

Do you live in an area that doesn't have garbage pickup? I did in PA and people just go to the woods and throw it out. Its a terrible situation.

Scott wrote:One of the largest natural arches in the world:

http://www.summitpost.org/article/27288 ... -arch.html

I've also found arrowheads, flint knives and other cool stuff. Also an old register on top of a peak where the last signature was from 1911.

That is very cool!

we live outside DC where yes, ...they pick up the "garbage"

My finds are not nearly as cool as some of yours, but they include:

- a pair of Ray Bans
- railroad spike (I was not near a railroad)
- arrow head outside of Tucson

While snowmobiling just outside the BWCA in Minnesota, I found a W.A. Fisher map (F-14) with many local routes, trails, landmarks, and distances marked on it by hand.

On another trip in that same area, our group found some very old blazes marking the portage that starts the "Vegetable Chain" of lakes. Potato Lake, Carrot Lake, Bean Lake, etc. Nobody had used the portage for many years, as the lakes are small, and the portages are long. It was once used out of necessity when that was the best mode of tranportation, but nobody in their right mind would use it for recreation nowadays.

I think that you people are some of the best people in the world perhaps because you have to depend on each other and you work as a team, and you know no matter how careful you are any day could be your last and on and on. I would think that all of you are the worlds greatest people and perhaps there is something to be learned from you and could be taught through out the world.
I consider myself fairly rugged but I could never do the things you do and for the life of me I can't see why you do it just for the sake of doing it.??? If I had good reason to get on top to get something the world needed or something like that I might consider it, But! to put yourself through such life threatening hardships just to do it does not compute?
But! Since you are doing it anyway I am so grateful for all the beautiful pictures and I have a passion for mountains and I thank you so much for everything and thanks so much for being some of the greatest people the world could ever know. You are my hero's .
I'm retired now in Tennessee and I look at your climbs all the time and study your pictures very close and enjoy them so much BUT! I can't help but worry for all of you and it hurts me so much to hear of accidents you sometimes suffer.
Thanks again. GeoBible at m

Dougb wrote:I've found a lot of stuff. Probably the "coolest" things I've found in the mts are arrowheads, every so often I find a really nice one.

Once many moons ago I was with a friend and we were flat broke. We were just walking along and found $191 in a rain puddle, not in a wallet, just cash in a puddle, that was very cool.

Probably the all time coolest was when I was in college. I was taking out the trash in the alley and discovered our dumpster was FILLED with textbooks. I told my roomies and we investigated. It turned out that some of the books were current, and to make a long story short we sold a lot of them back to the bookstore and made about a grand.

SOME ARROW HEADS ARE WORTH QUITE A LOT OF MONEY---Friend of mine is a collector and has one valued close to half mil. Best thing to do is get collectors to bid against each other for your arroheads.

SOME ARROW HEADS ARE WORTH QUITE A LOT OF MONEY---Friend of mine is a collector and has one valued close to half mil. Best thing to do is get collectors to bid against each other for your arroheads.

Unless they are on private land, it is also extremely illegal to collect them. As in a felony, $100,000 fine and prison time illegal.

I find many, but I always leave them where they are and take nothing but photos.

Here is one I found in the Maze of Canyonlands National Park:



Fourmile Canyon (one arrowhead and a bunch of other stuff):