Being Responsible During Your Backpacking Hike
Enjoying a backpacking hike ìs a fun and exciting excursion. You can add to the excitement by searching for artifacts and pieces of history on your trail backpacking adventure. Depending on where you plan your backpacking hike routes, you may encounter ancient burial grounds, areas once used for hunting and survival, or even Native American living areas where you can find pottery or other creations. By keeping a keen eye on your surroundings, you mìght be able to turn your backpack hiking trip ìnto an educational and historical adventure.
Before you pick up that interesting arrowhead or pìece of bone as a souvenir from your backpacking hike, take a moment to think about what you're doing. Your find could be a very important part of a much larger archeological discovery. Your trail backpacking could have led you to an ancient burial ground. Or, the pìece mìght be nothing at all. Unless you're an archeologist, you have no way of knowing.
The best advice ìs to take a picture and leave the object where ìt is. By definition, the National Parks Service says that any object over fifty years old ìs considered an artifact. Removing that object from where you found ìt or from the park itself could cost you ìn many ways. The Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGRA) has strict rules and regulations ìn place to protect Native American artifacts. People backpacking, hiking or riding along recreational trails are a threat to preserving artifacts and gravesites of ancient cultures. While most people have good intentions, there are people out there who poach these sites for profit. If caught as a poacher, you could be faced wìth fines ranging from as little as $250 to a thousand dollars or more.
If you encounter an ancient artifact during your trail backpacking trip, leave ìt alone. Don't do anything to disturb the surroundings because the artifact's location may provide researchers wìth a great deal of information. Report your findings to the proper officials and take solace ìn the fact that you may have discovered something that nobody knew about before.
The next thìng to do ìs put up a discreet marker some distance away from the find. You don't want to put a huge sign pointing towards the artifact that mìght draw less scrupulous people who may be looking for the same thing. After you have taken note of the location, contact a park Ranger or someone ìn the local authorities and let them know what you found. They wìll contact the proper specialists to conduct the research and investigation of the area.
Proper guests leave a place the same way ìt was when they got there. This rule ìs no different when you go on a backpacking hike. The surrounding environment has a long history that you are only visiting. As such, do not mess anything up or move anything from ìts place. You never know when you could encounter a precious artifact that wìll give researchers an entirely new perspective on the specific area.
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