Fluxlib - interesting. "Airplane Gully" is a little south of there, on the north side of Niwot Ridge near Navajo Pk. There's a tremendous amount of airplane debris there. Very spooky to hike up the gully by moonlight with a breeze making the metal flap.

Wilson Peak in CO also had a plane crash on the summit in the past few years. The last time I was up there, there was not just plane debris, but shredded clothing and personal items lying around on the way up the summit. At the top, a little monument had been started with people placing the objects in a pile. It's a strange feeling.

One time in Feb. I went for a hike up to a fire-lookout. At least, that was the plan.
I ran into snow, and followed the tracks of a couple of snowshoers for awhile. (Me, poor planning, no compass nor snowshoes).
As I got up higher, it became apparent that the snowshoers had lost their way, as the tracks started going in different directions. Still, the main "trail" continued up, as did I. A bit further, some of the tracks went off to the side. I followed for a bit, and . . . discovered a snow cave! Snow cave with a candle still burning inside! Bit eery.
I continued on, but the hour got too late and I turned around. Never did see the snowshoers.

Another time, at the end of a long hike, I found a pair of these at the trailhead.
I'm still using them.

I've seen some fossils in the Lost River Range of Idaho that may have been of marine origin. It is pretty cool to think about how much the earth has changed in millions of years to the point that marine fossils can be found thousands of feet above sea level and hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. Unless of course God placed them there to confuse us when he created the world 6000 years ago.

I found a garmin 'Legend' GPS on a trail in Banff once... also found a can of bear spray (unused) in Waterton Lakes NP (there were no chew marks on the bear spray... think someone just dropped it).

dskoon wrote:Another time, at the end of a long hike, I found a pair of these at the trailhead.
I'm still using them.

I found the same thing once... not at a trailhead, but in the middle of a talus field about 1/2 mile from the nearest snowfield. May have been there for months.

Hotoven wrote:




Sorry the photos are a little blurry, but this is what I was talking about! (not as cool as some of those other photos )

Pretty cool. One time I saw three newts fighting over a single worm. By the time I deployed the camera one of them ran off -

Found a pair of crampons on Shasta, but they were marked with the rental company so I turned them in.

Coming down Onion Valley Road I found this:

www.summitpost.org/images/medium/221022.JPG


Don't know how to post the picture!

I almost didn't believe what I was seeing. I was the first one on the scene, and had to flag down a ranger. From the road closest to the plane you couldn't see it; he at first didn't believe me.

Right next to an unmarked trail in a less popular area inside Theodore Roosevelt National Park, there is a canteloupe-sized fossil of a shell in a basketball-sized rock. Some real old-timers say they've always known it to be there, and I hope it stays sitting there for a long time to come.


I've been on a couple hikes where finding the car at the end of the day felt pretty cool.

-Hidden caves with pottery and petroglyphs. (In the most random places!)

-NASA weather satellite remenants, we sent the core back, as requested.

-Shrine dedicated to Elmo (way creepy)

-A photo picture of Sitting Bull embedded into a rock (way random)

...And the occasional jet plane crash, along with tow targets and drop tanks.

My friend and I came upon a whole series of pictographs in the Pate Valley along the Tuolumme River on the side of a granite wall. Below them were baskets and fishing "nets" woven from willow, some obsidian chips, a few old square nails, and other things. We found out later that these were left by a group of Paiutes and were leaving a tribute to their ancestral lands in Yosemite.

The most unusual (if not coolest) thing I've seen while pursuing an outdoor sport was Oberleutnant Helmut Frömsdorf's thigh bone. Frömsdorf was the captain of the WWII U853, which was sunk off Block Island, RI in 130' of water. On my first dive on the U853 I dropped through a blast hole forward of the conning tower, which happened to be above the captain's quarters and radio room. Having read up on the history of the wreck, I knew that Frömsdorf was unusually tall for a U-boat officer, almost 7'. One of the first things I saw inside the wreck, in what was the captain's quarters, was a very, very long human femur, which I realized almost certainly belonged to Frömsdorf. There are 40+ sets of skeletal remains, including many skulls, in the wreck, but it's a bit sobering to be able to recognize a specific bone as belonging to a specific historical figure.

JHH60 wrote:The most unusual (if not coolest) thing I've seen while pursuing an outdoor sport was Oberleutnant Helmut Frömsdorf's thigh bone. Frömsdorf was the captain of the WWII U853, which was sunk off Block Island, RI in 130' of water. On my first dive on the U853 I dropped through a blast hole forward of the conning tower, which happened to be above the captain's quarters and radio room. Having read up on the history of the wreck, I knew that Frömsdorf was unusually tall for a U-boat officer, almost 7'. One of the first things I saw inside the wreck, in what was the captain's quarters, was a very, very long human femur, which I realized almost certainly belonged to Frömsdorf. There are 40+ sets of skeletal remains, including many skulls, in the wreck, but it's a bit sobering to be able to recognize a specific bone as belonging to a specific historical figure.

awesome

Always wanted to dive U853. First heard about it in the early '70s.

I was hiking alone along the base of the South Face of Half Dome and found a rusty old eye bolt. I picked it up, and it appeared to be hand-forged, it still had the hammer marks on it, and it looked pretty crude.

There was a bunch of other debris lying scattered around, cameras, water bottles, pipe wrenches, pipes, and anything else you could drop from the cables route. I was at the spot where a lot of that stuff funnels down from the cables route above.

I thought possibly I had found an original 1865 George Anderson bolt from the very first ascent of Half Dome, but I wasn't sure. George Anderson was a blacksmith, and he took a portable forge up there and made his own hardware on sight. So I put it in my pack, not knowing if I was taking an artifact from the Park, or just picking up a piece of trash.

It sat in my garage in a plastic box for a number of years until one day Ken Yager of the YCA was posting some stuff on ST showing some old climbing gear and other historical climbing stuff. I emailed Ken to ask him about the bolt, and he told me it was highly unlikely that it was an Anderson bolt, the only one he knew about belonged to the Park, and they weren't parting with it, but could I send him a photo? He said he had been looking for one of those for years for the museum exhibit, especially during the Facelift Park clean up that he hosts each year, but had come up empty so far despite searching in the area where I found the bolt.

I sent the photo, and Ken emailed be back immediately saying he was 99% sure that it WAS an Anderson bolt, and could he see it in person? I was to be in the Valley in a few days, and we agreed to meet up. Ken and his kids were at the base of Swan Slab, and he was very excited to see the bolt.

I donated it to the museum collection on the spot. Although it certainly had some value, I didn't feel it should be in a private collection (now that it was aunthenicated), and I was pretty sure the Park Service would frown on me having taken it out of the Park. It has since been traveling around the world with Ken and the rest of the exhibits.

Btw, if you have the chance, go see the collection of climbing artifacts put together by the YCA, it's very cool.