Cleaning Up Campsites Along Beaver Creek, Northern Utah

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised to see how clean this area along Beaver Creek in northeastern Utah was, with such an insignificant amount of litter along the forest roads that I had initially decided I wasn’t even gonna bother with any attempt at picking up what tiny amount of litter may have been scattered about. Definitely one of the cleanest areas I’ve camped at in my eight months of life on the road and in a tent; only a handful of the dozens of places I’ve camped, and roads and trails I’ve hiked and biked along have been this clean.

But then the area got extremely busy with camping parties last weekend, filling up every available campsite along the road, and a nice family even camped on the other end of a large meadow I was in.

My temporary neighbors were really friendly, Dakota made a new friend with their husky and the two enjoyed their time playing all weekend, but I noticed that unfortunately these folks had left quite a bit of trash scattered about when they left.

So I decided to clean up after them, since it was so close to my campsite and not much of an inconvenience, and then noticed on a walk down the road that several other parties had left piles of trash behind in their fire pits. I’m quite certain that more trash had accumulated just in that one weekend that had already been present in the entire area along the miles of dirt road which paralleled the creek! Oh well, it gave me something more productive to do the next day during my walk down the road with Dakota.

My neighbors had even left behind a ripped tent, all set up, apparently too inconvenient to take it down and throw it away since the door zipper had torn!

Not too common that I find entire tents left behind in the backcountry, but I do remember seeing an empty tent in New Mexico that had also apparently been abandoned, so I guess this isn’t an entirely isolated incidence :) Anyway, I did what any responsible backcountry would have done with their own tent, and took it down and packed it up so it could be hauled away into town and thrown into a dumpster where it belongs.

The fire pit was also filled with trash, and there were paper towels scattered all about, along with a few plastic water bottles, food wrappers, etc.

Apparently people are prone to leave food behind, too, for among the trash in one of the other fire pits was an opened but completely full can of Pringles!

And in the next campsite down the people had left a package of hotdogs that still had two of the hotdogs left inside!

I’m used to seeing trash, but no so much wasted food, so that was disappointing, especially being bear country this behavior isn’t only wasteful but also considered unsafe.

Having filled a dog food bag half full with litter by this point, I decided to go ahead and see how much trash I could find along the roads on my bike rides over the course of the week before I headed into town with the trash to be thrown away.

Really not bad at all, despite going out of my way looking for trash. I collected just a handful of beer cans, a couple crushed red solo cups, a plastic water bottle, a pile of paper towels that was strewn along a small section of the road, what looked like a baby diaper, a shirt, a washcloth, a few candy wrappers, and an old crushed plastic gallon milk jug. I also collected a small pile of paper towels that were strewn around my campsite on the other side of the meadow, some broken glass, some bottle tops and a few more candy and junk food wrappers. Now the place is even cleaner than when I arrived, but time will tell if it stays that way, for it’s been really busy with campers and tons of four wheelers over the weekends.

I’m honestly shocked at how clean it was when I got here considering how much litter was left behind in just a matter of days, seeing that it appears this area gets heavily used. Maybe there are just others who come by like myself and pick up whatever litter is left behind. In any event, when it was all said and done I got a full dog food bag of trash, though a little bit of it is my own personal trash as well...

Thankfully there is a dumpster for public use at the entrance to Logan Canyon on the way into Logan, at a small public recreation site alongside the river, where I will be able to dump this and all my other trash, which is really nice and certainly not the case in all the areas I’ve visited so far.