Happy Earth Day Everyone!!!

On Sunday April 6, Michelle and I planned to hike to the Hollywood sign. In order to get to the trail without producing extra air pollution, we decided not to drive there. We planned to take the Metro to the Hollywood/Vine station, take the DASH bus about halfway up Beachwood Dr., walk the rest of the way up to the start of the trail, and then start our hike. However, after getting off the Metro at our designated stop, we found out the DASH doesn't run on Sundays. Not at all discouraged, we walked about 2 miles, mostly uphill, to the start of the Hollywood sign hiking trail. When we got there, we saw some patrol officers who told us the trail was closed. 

Since we were planning to pick up trash, we decided to just pick up trash as we walked back down Beachwood Dr. We used a paper grocery bag to carry the trash that we picked up because we know that it takes a lot less time for paper to break down in the environment than for plastic to break down. We also brought gardening gloves and reusable water bottles so that we produced as little waste as possible on this trip. I noticed half of the items we picked up were cigarette butts. This is so disgusting and disheartening because it shows that many people smoke, which is detrimental to everyone's health, and that these people are too inconvenienced to dispose of their cigarette butts properly. We also noticed that we found more trash and cigarette butts the closer we got to the more city-like area as opposed to the area with all the fancy houses closer to the start of the hiking trail. 

The trash we picked up as we walked down Beachwood Dr. in Los Angeles.

Along the way, we saw many pedestrians and a couple of them even stopped to ask us about what we were doing. They were pleased by our actions and thanked us for cleaning up their neighborhood. I think this proves that at least some people really are concerned about all the trash that is lying around in public areas. It's quite sad as well to think that seeing all this trash in public is normal and more people aren't bothered enough to pick up trash or fight to get something done about it. Still, it's nice to know that some people do care about the conditions of our environment. As a last note, please check out www.litteringiswrongtoo.org for some laughs and to see what kind of things are just as inappropriate as littering!

Marshall Canyon

The second Trail Blazers hike was done along the Marshall Canyon trail. This trail is nice because it is less strenuous and more shady than Baldy, but there is a lot of poison oak along the trail. This proved difficult while picking up trash because some of it accumulated in the poison oak bushes. There were also thousands of ants in the dense, leafy areas on the sides of the trail that would start to crawl up my shoes where I stepped to get trash (but it was okay, I learned to step quickly!).

Can you spot the plastic water bottle in this picture? Unfortunately litter is difficult to reach sometimes, and the plastic will never fully decompose.

The most frustrating part of this trail clean up was cleaning up a picnic area because there were multiple trash cans in the vicinity already, trash was simply not put into them. To me, this was a sign of a voluntary negligence towards caring about the environment. There are a lot of people who run and bike along the trail and everyone drops something on accident from time to time without realizing it. I think this quote from the article “Don't Trash the Trails” by John Blue sums up a great point:

“I would like us all to try an experiment. The next time you are on a run, make it a point to pick up the first empty gel packet or bar wrapper you see on the ground and put it in the trash. (Just one thing!)

We all occasionally drop something. If each of us makes it a point to pick one thing up during every run — the odds are good the most we’ll ever see is that one thing.”

Grabbed a balloon out of a bush on the walk down from the trail. Once again there was enough trash to fill the entire bag.

First Trail Blazers Hike!

The first Trail Blazers hike was done along the fire road of the Mount Baldy trail from Manker Flats to the Top of the Notch restaurant (also accessible via ski lift). The hike was about 7 miles round trip, but most of the trash could be found in two specific areas: by the cars parked at Manker Flats, and by the restaurant at the top of the ski lift. 

Here is a picture that I took from the Top of the Notch restaurant looking down towards the trail.

One part of the hike that struck me was after picking up one of many cans along the trail. This can was slightly heavy so I shook it thinking dirt and rocks would fall out. However, a ton of ants started crawling out of it. I felt like I had destroyed their home, but this can should have never been their home in the first place.

Another strange thing that I picked up was a diaper. This was pretty gross, but it was more annoying that I found it fairly close to a trash can. Teach your kids to clean up after themselves!

The best part of the hike was coming across other people who intended on picking trash up as well on their descent. Our goal as Trail Blazers is to clean up trails, and finding other people with the same intentions or being able to inspire other people is rewarding as well!

A full bag of trash and recyclables after just one hike-there is still a lot to be picked up!