It's common in Big Bend for people to drop their main packs while doing quick ascents of peaks. Due to a problem with bears raiding these packs the rangers installed bear-proof lockers common pack-stashing areas. People still hide their packs though, I'm guessing to avoid thieves.

As for writing your name on the pack, that was something we did in Boy Scouts. I still see it these days, though usually on the side towards the body. It can only be read when it's off the person.

-Blast

p.s. someone mentioned not tramping around too much so as to not cover up tracks. That makes a lot of sense, too.

But would you leave it sitting on the main trail in plain sight, or take it off aways, and hide it under something?

Wow, some very interesting responses and thoughts I had not previously considered.

Like several here have written, leaving a pack beside the trail (whether it is hidden or in plain sight) is a very common practice that 1000's of others including myself have been doing for years, and recently as this past Saturday while we out hiking in the local area and I did not to hump a large pack over a large rock scramble then up to a peak when a stripped down pack of the essentials is all that is required.

In the summer months on many of the summits around here, it is not uncommon to see anywhere from 1 to 30+ packs and related gear worth thousands of dollars sitting beside a summit trail. In all the years, I have never heard of theft being a problem which can be attributed to the usual pinhead thieves not wanting to walk miles and climb hundreds, if not thousands of feet just to steal a backpack. Also around here, the mountaineering and hiking community, though large, can also be very small and it would not take many thefts for the community to start noticing and weeding out the perpatrators in their midst.

In this particular real life scenario, Dougwalkabout was right on target with his statement of "Your role is that of a concerned citizen. If somebody is hurt or lost, you are potentially the first link in the chain of rescue."

So here is the rest of the story which was posted on a local forum and I also received some emails on.

On Saturday, a hiker mentioned in the forum that on the day (Friday) before, he and unspecified others were heading up to summit a local peak and met someone who had found a pack on the trail. A short discussion ensued and they surmised that whomever had left the pack had done so deliberately and went up the summit with a light pack. When this first hiker and his friends later descended the summit, the pack was still there and they did not recall seeing anyone other people on the summit or on the descent which was now late in the day. This hiker had posted the above expressing his concern about the lone backpack and the possibility of stranded people up on the mountain. The following info was posted by others.

By this time on Friday, another hiker had seen the same backpack by the trail and removed the wallet from the pack. Before removing the wallet, the hiker left a note (details unknown) in the pack then proceeded down the mountain which by this time of day, it was near dark. The hiker then turned the wallet in at the base of the mountain (popular ski resort).

The ski resort called the police who in turn contacted SAR and an immediate search was launched.

A SAR member has since verified that they found the owner of the pack along with a companion up on the mountain in the dark and with miserable weather surrounding them. SAR reports the hikers certainly would ran into serious difficulty had they tried to make their descent under those conditions.

Had it not been for the foresight of the hiker who turned in the wallet, the outcome could of been much worse..

A few things quickly come to mind about this incident...and I also gleaned some very useful info from the responses here.

- Would it had been better to just leave the pack as is and report it or do what the hiker did and search the pack? See my next points below.

- I don't neccessarily agree with removing the wallet. I may of left the wallet there and made note of the person's name and DL number as the LEO's could identify the person based on the DL number itself. That said, the hiker did the right thing by turning in the wallet and possibly saved these people's lives.

- No matter how trusting I am, I would never leave my wallet in any pack anywhere. Instead, if you leave your pack at the base of a summit, take your wallet with you but leave a note in it with details of your party, route, expected ETA etc. This is something that I will be doing from this point forward. I also like Blast's idea of writing your name on the outside of the pack with a Sharpie

- In relation to the point above, it goes without saying, leave a detailed itinerary with family/friends.

- Don't start too late in the day for the summit, especially this time of year when darkness is coming earlier with each passing

- Never given much thought about a backpack beside the trail being a crime scene...Then again in this day and age, you just never know and the less disturbance of the pack and immediate area, the better.

Photo of the mountain where the 2 hikers were found by SAR.

in my hiking area - los padres national forest - marijuana gardens are constantly being discovered. the forest service et al took out over 28,000 plants from just one location in august 2010.

the 'garden guards' carry automatic weapons. imagine being caught looking through his backpack when that 'garden guard' returns from a nature call...

on the other hand, at the junction of the main mt. whitney trail and the john muir trail, just a short slog from the mt. whitney summit, it's not uncommon to find 10+ backpacks left behind while the summitteers summit.

i still wouldn't touch a pack, but i would contact authorities as soon as possible.

situationally dependent.

As lukus said, "Context is everything."

A.k.a., "situationally dependent."

In my mountains, cautious and respectful intervention would in certain circumstances be appropriate.

In other parts of the world, such action could place *me* in a survival situation.

I can tell you that if I were a tourist/trekker in a foreign land, I wouldn't go near another person's gear. Simply put: I don't know the rules, and therefore I mind my own business. Kinda sad, but there it is.

When I wrote this I was assuming that the pack wasn't cached deliberately, an assumption I shouldn't have made. I'm changing my answer: I'd leave the pack and proceed as Blast says.

I'd be turning it in as found property. Honesty is the best policy, and I believe in karma.

I once found a backpack beside the road, in a not very remote area of the UK.
Funny place to leave one, in relatively flat country, and very exposed to theft. It appeared undamaged, so I presumed that it had not fallen from a vehicle.
I observed for about ten minutes in case the owner was nearby, then called the police.
They arrived promptly and opened the pack which contained two large batteries and some cables, no camping or hiking gear.

I never heard how it came to be there, absent minded film crew ?
Stolen and then abandoned, perhaps after removal of other contents?

An acquaintance has a story about finding a backpack that had clearly been ripped to shreds by a bear. Her suspicion is that some hikers got chased by a bear and someone slipped their pack to run faster and/or provide the bear with a distraction. She also drew the conclusion that the tactic must have worked because there were no mauled bodies or pools of blood around.

Another interpretation is that it was a failed attempt at setting up a hang-bag for food. Bears can be quite adept at defeating installations that fall short of perfect. Possible. Probably more probable than the story about a close escape from a bear.

But the story about harried hikers dropping the pack in desperation is the better story. Between the two I know which one will be told around a campfire.

Like many such scenarios, there is not really an adequate amount of information presented to make a rational decision.

IMO, unless there is some convincing reason for me to believe otherwise, I would assume the pack was left there by the owner on purpose and the owner is coming back to get it, and would just leave it be.

I might well take a picture of it, and record the location, but it's someone else's property and I am not going to mess with it, absent some very good reason to do so.