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Kerosene
10-09-2012, 15:41
See: http://news.yahoo.com/hike-becomes-quest-writer-decades-old-letter-193624434--abc-news-topstories.html

Reported By Dina Abou Salem:
A regular trek in California's Sequoia National Park took an unexpected turn with the discovery of a 40-year-old note lodged inside a canister.
On Sept. 8, Oakland resident Larry Wright, his son Aaron, and grandson Skyler were part of a larger group on an 11- day hike near Milestone Mountain.
"We climbed this peak in order to see a lake, but there was this hump below us which blocked our view. So we decided to go down a few feet to see the lake and that's when I saw, completely by chance, a rusty canister," Larry Wright told ABC News.
Wright threw away the canister but held on to what he believed was its valuable content. "The canister was possibly for a Kodak film and had a metal screw. It was almost entirely buried in soil," said Wright.

Inside the canister was a note, in mint condition, written by 13-year-old Tim Taylor in 1972. It read: "Tim Taylor climbed to this peak, Thursday, August 17, 1972. Age 13 years. Anyone finding this note please write."

Taylor's address pointed to a home in La Canada Flintridge, built in 1954.

"I checked if Tim was still at this address, but it seems he is no longer there," said Wright. The owners of the house had changed two or three times since Tim Taylor lived there with his family, reported La Canada Valley Sun.

Wright, who is an avid hiker, had been on this route almost six times. "The first time I have been in this area was in 1979, five years after Tim left the note," Wright said.
Ever since he came back from the hike, Wright and his wife, Candy Wright, began a quest to find Tim Taylor. "It would be interesting to talk to him [Taylor]. We both traveled this trail, which is way in backcountry. It's a stroke of luck that I found the note, and I am just responding to what he wanted," said Wright, who believes the canister must have shifted location over the years.

"I tried to find Tim Taylor on Google, and I contacted a local newspaper, thinking they might be interested in spreading the word about the note and its writer," Candy Wright told ABC News, who believes that Taylor, who would now be about 53 years old, might have tried to contact the local newspaper today.

"If he is trying to reach me about the note, he can definitely either call or write me," said Larry Wright.

gizzy bear
10-09-2012, 15:45
tim was found...turns out he is some sort of judge in california....and he left it there while on a boy scout outting... really cool story!! :B

gizzy bear
10-09-2012, 15:50
He also tried searching voter registration records and Google, but it wasn't until he reached out to La Caņada's local paper, the La Caņada Valley Sun (http://www.lacanadaonline.com/community/tsn-818-1008-40-years-later-la-cantildeada-teens-handwritten-mountaintop-note-gets-a-response,0,6257447.story), that he struck gold. The newspaper published a story about Wright's discovery last weekend, and the calls from family and friends started pouring in to Taylor, now a San Diego County Superior Court Judge.
In a Valley Sun story published Monday, Taylor explained he was hiking with his Boy Scout troop on the day that he buried the message. He had set out solo to climb the unnamed 12,000 foot peak because it wasn't included in his official Boy Scout map.

He also revealed that his father got him into the habit of leaving messages in bottles for strangers to find.
“Whenever [my family] would go to Catalina, my dad would have us put a note in a bottle,” Taylor said to the Valley Sun. “It’s kind of the same idea.”
Taylor also proposed naming the peak the Taylor-Wright Peak.
Becky Satnat, a park ranger for 22 years, said Wright's discovery was surprising and unprecedented, given how small Taylor's note was. "I've never heard of anything like it," she said to the Times. "This does not happen."
The oldest message in a bottle was discovered April of this year (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/30/oldest-message-in-a-bottle_n_1843408.html), when Scottish skipper Andrew Leaper hauled in his fishing nets. The Guinness Book of World Records confirmed that the bottle had spent 97 years and 309 days at sea (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/1/oldest-message-in-a-bottle). It had been released by Captain CH Brown of the Glasgow School of Navigation on June 19, 1914, and the note inside the bottle promised six pence to whoever found it.

TOW
10-09-2012, 17:49
So Cool!!!!

shelb
10-10-2012, 00:15
That is really cool! However, it does violate "leave no trace." lol

Josh Calhoun
10-10-2012, 12:37
thats awesome!

Capt Nat
10-10-2012, 17:09
That is pretty neat. Some could scream a violation of LNT but I think that like geocaches, this kind of thing is a fun and harmless exception...

rickb
10-10-2012, 18:42
That is pretty neat. Some could scream a violation of LNT but I think that like geocaches, this kind of thing is a fun and harmless exception...


Not quite the same, but how about leaving a note to yourself (or your unborn kids) in one of the registers they have at the AMC husts.

You might have fun finding it 30+ years later-- they keep the registers on site forever .

hikerboy57
10-10-2012, 18:44
Not quite the same, but how about leaving a note to yourself (or your unborn kids) in one of the registers they have at the AMC husts.

You might have fun finding it 30+ years later-- they keep the registers on site forever .

summer of 2011 i read my own posts in madison hut. stayed there the first time in august of 1985, the register was still there.
all new hut, old registers are one of the only things left from the old hut.

Lone Wolf
10-10-2012, 20:14
That is really cool! However, it does violate "leave no trace." lol

there's a bunch of crap in the katahdin pile

rickb
10-11-2012, 06:09
there's a bunch of crap in the katahdin pile

What's that?

Brock142
10-11-2012, 06:24
Ya that cool story, I'm little bit shock to read it but you can see that who was the interesting thing in it. I saw Tim in his interview and he told that he like hiking in his time period and specially go on solo tour.

Lone Wolf
10-11-2012, 06:26
What's that?

the pile of rock at the base of the sign