Well, I don't know what to say.  Those of us familiar with the Clackamas R.D. are quite aware of the free drunken lawlessness that occurs near town.  A friend of mine, new to Portland, camped along the Clackamas near Ripplebrook for his birthday.  This is his story.  What can we do?  It's frustrating, and seemingly pointless to pick up other's excrement....why is it so hard for people to show respect, for each other, for the wilds?  Guns, garbage, and ATVs, read on if you dare. "Uneventful drive until I got to where the 224 makes a sharp left as it hits the Clackamas River.  Apparently someone forgot to turn because the guard rail was taken out and a few dozen cops, firemen, paramedics and a winch were there trying to pull out a car.  I wondered why I hadn't seen any cops at the Redland Road turnoff (always at least a few).  Got to Mouse Camp and the campsite was trashed.  Garbage everywhere.  They even left bags of garbage so the animals would have a chance to litter too (tearing it to shreds to lick the plates and stuff).  They also decided to use the road as a toilet and leave the used TP behind.  Trash all the way down to the trail and some on the trail.  They kicked down lots of thin trees along the trail.  They even smashed some of the old, rotted logs used to define the path to little pieces, carried them off and tried to burn them at the campsite (morons).  Since it was late I decided to just clean up my immediate area, eat dinner and go to sleep. Wanted to go to sleep early so I could get up at 5AM and fish.  Around 11PM rednecks show up.  Things were nice & loud for the next few hours.  Around 1:30 AM things quieted down and I went to sleep.  Alarm went off at 5 but I didn't get up til 6.  Hung out with a very confident woodpecker (didn't seem to be afraid of me at all) and a very cute chipmunk while I had my Birthday morning coffee.  Grabbed my fishin' gear and headed down the road to the trail.  The rednecks had taken the camp right at the entrance to the trail.  I had to walk through their camp to get to the trail.  I was quickly stopped by two giant rottweilers growling and and one looked very vicious.  One of the guys came out and said hi then told his dogs to calm down.  One sat and looked friendly but the other wanted me.  The guy had to hold the dog back by his collar (as he was trying to pull away and get to me) as I went through the camp.  Walked about a mile down the trail before I found my first spot to try.  Went from spot to spot along the river trying different lures and bait but no luck.  Waded out to a bar of rocks in the middle of the river as I took in my surroundings.  Around 10 am, I could see from my vantage in the middle of the Clackamas River, the other campers walking down the path with their dogs and decided to head back to camp (fishless) while I had the chance to do so without being menaced by a dog.  Got o camp and made brunch (reheated dinner) and had a Birthday beer.  Widmer Nelson Imperial IPA. DAmn Good Stuff!  I never drink before 5pm, but it's my birthday.  Around 11:30 more people show up and at the second of the three camps along this road.  For a solo camp this is sure getting crowded.  And LOUD!  I started hearing cars and people everywhere.  Spent the next few hours hearing cars, ATVs, people yelling and gunshots.  I had planned to return to fishing at dusk but I eventually decided that this is not the solo camp or birthday that I wanted and went home at around 2PM (after picking up everything left by the previous dirtbags except the poo and used TP)."

Hey!  That was me!  That camp was wonderful less than two weeks ago when I took the Wife & brat there.  Some trash (that we had picked up) but not like when I came back.  Realized today that it's 4th of July weekend and it's the first camp after the 223 ends so that's probably why it started getting crowded.   Hope the people in that car that went over the ridge are okay.

Sorry to hear about your bad experience, but it has been my experience that the closer you are to Estacada (or civilization), the more yahoos you run into.....Especially in the summertime.

It sucks.  Those that care about the natural world feel like it's a slap. I found this guy's site today by accident.  Scroll down about 1/2 way for his trash experiences. http://www.eugenecarsey.com/camp/hwy224/road46.htm I think the F.S. takes it too lightly.  It's really getting out of hand out there.  And WTF are we to do, the average joe who just wants a nature weekend?  Confront a group of drunk dudes at night?   Hit or miss out there...strange days.  I really don't know the answer.  More police would suck.  Shame?  That hits to the core.

Maybe SOLV could use some of those pictures and put together a public service ad that could be aired by the local TV stations. It probably wouldn't help much. The people who left all that trash would probably just laugh if they saw their trash on television!

Thanks for posting this, Robert. It continues to be a problem, but not an unsolvable one. The main difference between a national park and national forest on this front is simple law enforcement, and agency presence on the ground. Even an open-borders park has a fraction of vandalism, shooting and dumping that you can find on any given day in any given national forest. In the case of the Mount Hood NF, the good news is that the brunt of the bad behavior is focused in just a few areas -- and mostly in the Clackamas. I don't expect the USFS to get their act together anytime soon on this, but the counties (Multnomah and Clackamas) have done a lot to step up law enforcement, even as county budgets are under stress.  Thinking outside the box a bit, I'm a proponent of mandatory national service for young people, following high school: 2-4 years, your pick of civil or military service. I'd love to see the "guard station" concept resurrected, and staffed with young people -- at an age when they can also absorb a connection with the natural world, too. It wouldn't take much to do -- probably a fraction of what we spend in our foreign police actions in a given year -- plus, we seem to be in an economic moment where young people don't have a lot of options coming out of school, so would welcome the opportunity to gain experience and better way to earn money than pumping coffee or flipping burgers. Okay, end of rant -- but I did want to post some similar images from a short exploration of the area around the Collawash Bridge last month. First, the yahoos have found the bridge, itself (a wonderful, and soon-to-be historic structure) and established a place underneath to deposit trash and spray the bridge with graffiti (a new phenomenon -- there was none as recently as three years ago): Meanwhile, down in the old camp area (and I'd love to know the history of it -- spotted a phone insulator oon one of the trees), it was actually pretty clean, save for trash in a few gigantic fire pits. But there were a few traces of yahoos to be found, if you looked -- for example, many trees had the gratuitous hatchet marks that only a yahoo would leave behind: There seems to be a credo somewhere in the yahoo manual that all firewood must be cut from green, standing trees using a hatchet or axe... because there's always the charred, green, 6-foot lot laying in the fire pit, too. And yes, there was a toilet in this camp, too -- this time, a handy-dandy paint bucket topped with a toilet seat: Held together with -- wait for it -- duct tape, of course! Terrific design. I took this next photo from exactly the same spot, pointed in the other direction -- I suppose to illustrate the excellent view the yahoos had from their crude toilet, but also to illustrate why it's important to get ahead of this problem -- the impact is very real and do we have a lot at stake: Tom

The Forest Service was in large measure created as a response to lawlessness in the woods. We are particularly afflicted by the proximity of Portland.   People go to the woods to get away from restrictions. The FS has failed to maintain order in the woods in part because they have withdrawn to urban offices and are only slightly present in the woods. I agree that the Guard Station system would be a good network to bring back. But I have noticed that when the young seasonal staff are put up at Ripplebrook, they can't wait to get out of there and back to Portland. In the past, it wasn't so easy to run back to town for comfort.   Unfortunately the great leaders of the FS are long gone and would not rise in todays agency anyway.   Flooding the Portland Senator and Congressmen with complaints might boost some increased security.

Donovan, on your last point, it struck me that both Reps. Defazio and Walden were featured in the paper yesterday on the topic of timber payments to counties. Both stated the goal as "jobs" in counties dominated by federal lands, so one way to lobby the delegation might be to suggest that a job within the USFS (or Sheriff's office) doing law enforcement is a good way to add employment in rural communities like Estacada or Dufur -- given that the program (in the past) has basically been a direct payment to counties. A fairly compelling argument is to promote recreation (hiking, fishing, camping, riding, hunting, etc.), since that's the obvious negative impact of lawlessness. I think I'll send off something tonight! Tom

Donovan, you are exactly right.  Those that are dedicated to the district, and in the field, are those of us that are the most powerless.  Those in charge sit behind a desk many, many miles from here.  Something funny happened to our national perspective after WWII, with increased factory production, mechanization, communication - and the entry into the atomic age.  DUCK and cover.  Maybe too many lives were shattered by that horrible war, I don't know, but something changed. You know, I was just thinking how wonderful it would be to have the GS system back in place.  What a tragedy that it was abandoned, much like our nation's streetcar system.  "Modern" in 1950, in hindsight, was actually quite short sighted and destructive.  Yes, an official presence in the woods is exactly what is needed.  Not police or arrests, just someone in charge out there, keeping an eye on things.  How much would it cost?  You could fund it with the cost of just 1 fighter jet..... The camps close to town however, need some sort of regulation I'm sorry to say.  It's just a gigantic pile of poop and paper.  Imagine the fecal bacteria. The only way for things to change in our democracy is if The People actually stand up and fight for what they believe in.  This sort of chutzpah is getting harder to find in the real, tangible world away from computers and ME-Phones.

Part of the 46 camps problem is driven by the managed campground fees. If several families converge in five rigs for a weekend, the site and extra car fees can really add up. The managed campgrounds do have some rules also that some party people find limiting. The "remember the TP but forget the shovel syndrome" I do not understand. It might be an aboriginal offering or something primal perhaps but we are supposedly an evolved species. Some strains my be late to evolve I guess. There may be folks who leave piles in their yards in town as well, but I doubt that as well. Drugs and alcohol can impair judgment. Digging a hole inebriated could be very difficult. Perhaps that's it. Now in China, I understand it is expected to forget the shovel. The buses pull off the road and the passengers go over the hill or behind the house. So maybe we are being prudish or "culturally insensitive". But I think it fair to say that we also have cultural values in general that also are legitimate. We have also reduced disease and pestilence -- with a shovel.

Well, I will add my own miserable experience that I had today.  Probably the worst experience I have had since starting hiking in the district back in 2002. I did get to go hiking today, but had a rather bad day……I wanted to go up one of my favorite wintertime routes, the old road up Fish creek (old road 54, from the north).  I got there about 10:00, and there was a pickup there.  It was two "guys", who had gotten assault rifles for Christmas.  There was a large slash pile about 200 yards up the old ripped up road that they thought was a good thing to shoot at.  I asked them if they would consider moving up the road a bit, since this hadn't been a place for shooting in the past, but all he could say was "I don't want to be a jerk, but we were here first".  I wasn't about the hike through their shooting gallery, so I left, but as I was leaving, I said they were giving shooters a bad name-he didn't seem to care.  As I was walking back to my truck, his buddy fired off about 40 rounds, just to show me how important he was, I guess.  I wanted to report it to the FS in Estacada, but they were closed today.  After I left, I was thinking that area was supposed to be closed to shooting due to the thinning projects in the area.  The really sad thing is that I went back after my hike, and found two more guys there, and walked up the road a bit, and it is quickly becoming another one of the many shooting junk piles that litter the area.  I took a couple photos of the carnage.  Those idiots think firing into a slash pile is a safe backdrop? Anyway, I ended up driving up the road a bit and hiked another trail.  The bad thing was that I forgot to pack my new boots I got for Christmas!  I ended up wearing my tennis shoes, and the trail wasn't in too bad of shape, so I did OK.  I was careful – I didn't want to twist an ankle.  The other thing was that I could hear those bozos most of the time on the trail, and it ruined my mood all day….. I'm quite happy to cede the old gravel pits to the shooters.  At least they are reasonably safe, and there certainly are LOTS of them to choose from.  What really bothers me is this old road has gotten to become a pretty decent trail, and has been very busy with foot and horse travel the last few times I've been there.  It is a really nice walk, and it would be a shame to have it ruined like so many other places. Here are a couple shots of the garbage (this was some of the big stuff).  I didn't take too many since there were people shooting there when I took these pictures.

Sorry you had that experience. Not sure what to say. But if one does feel endangered, call the County. Forget the FS. They pay the County to run around up there as it is. And the County isn't asleep or on sabbatical when you make the call to 911. If there is any FS around, they will call them anyway. My 2cents.