Here is a post from a recent Goldstrike visitor. Joe, since you moved to Hesperia, is anyone else that you know of picking up trash at Goldstrike?


I visited Gold Strike yesterday and was relativley appalled by the majority of my experience. I arrived at the springs around 8am and found 2 groups of campers. One was a pleasant group of young climbing hippies from Wisconsin, the second a large group of loud obnoxious kids. I could tell immediately that the second group were not your ideal hot spring stewards. A large ammount of trash was spread out below and above the cave pool including numberous crushed beer cans, water bottles, half-eaten apples, squished grapes, a hunk of raw meat, numerous glowsticks, cigarette butts, Etc.

I soaked for a while in the cooler side of the cave pool and then when up to the upper pools for a bit of reprieve from the load scene below. As the kids got out of the springs I took over the hot portion of the cave pool while they "cleaned up" camp. Somebody had recently added a row of sandbags and left a supply of extra bags so I took one and began filling it with the kids trash. I was gathering it up right in front of some of them including the grosser stuff like the food items.

I returned to soaking and soon smelled the unmistakable stench of burning plastic form their second campsite above the pools. The toxic smoke continued for more than an hour and gave me quite a headache. At one point I got out and found huge mounds (up to 2 feet) of suds floating down and in the cooler pool adjacent to the cave pool. They were using a large ammount of soap to wash items directly into the stream flowing through their camp immediately above the pools. I was fuming at this point.

One of the guys picked up, slightly, on my passive agressive tactics and began gathering up a few pieces oc trash I had missed near their lower camp. As another in his party was climbing past the springs between campsites the cleaner called to him, "any trash up there". He answered, "nothing we'd want to take home." The uppper party left and I went up to survey the aftermath. There I found a smoldering fire pit stacked high with additional beer cans, food trash, cigar tins, a sweathshirt and another unidentified article of clothing someone tried to burn, Etc. Cigarette butts were scattered widely. Off to the side, on a rock shelf they had left a couple of sleeping bags, a sleeping pad, a pillow, quite a lot of unopend packaged food, and other items they were too lazy to pack out. I took out my larger trash bag and begas picking the smoldering trash from the fire pit and bagging it. The remainder of the group hiked through from the lower camp without comment.

When I checked out the lower campsite it was only slightly better. Still maybe a dozen beer cans smashed into a fire ring and a large stock of unopened canned food and boxed dry goods. My bag was getting pretty full and weighing about 25 pouds so I left most of this stuff at the lower site for another visit or another good samaritan.

On the plus side, the hike was great, the water felt excellent, and I met a number of additional kind folks on the return hike which helped restore some faith in humankind. Still, this trip stood in sharp contrast to my idyllic last visit 6 weeks ago on Halloween when I saw nobody until late morning and saw very little trash.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2009 04:56PM by Paul P..