Shelter Graffiti

[Hammock Hanger]

The night before I headed to trail days I stayed up in Rock Gap Shelter just up the road from Rainbow Springs Campground.

The shelter being really close to a road is almost covered in graffiti. I noticed those further away from roads have less.

As experienced hikers who use the shelters as your home while on the trail how do you feel about graffiti??


Sue/Hammock Hanger

[Lone Wolf]

Doesn't bother me at all, course I don't stay in shelters. But when I usta it didn't bother me.

[Kerosene]

While I'm not thrilled with folks' need to deface buildings with graffiti, I do tend to read some of them. I'm much more accommodating if they don't use a knife to carve into the wood. All in all, I'd rather not see it, but I don't know how you stop it.

[Brushy Sage]

I was turned off by most graffiti and carvings. The one exception was in a very old shelter in Georgia, where people had carved their initials and dates: my favorite was "G. W., 1776."

[steve hiker]

I like the carvings and scribblings left behind by others. It's like a time machine into past, especially the older ones. I've seen signatures left from '68, the 70s, and quite a few from the 80s. It's like they left a piece of themselves that you can peer into the past with.

I remember the first time I saw an AT shelter, I spent about an hour just looking around, looking at the mementos left from the past. You could almost see the hikers from '77 who spent a rainy afternoon there. It was like I had entered a time capsule, very quaint and poignant.

[Kozmic Zian]

Yea.....Graffiti. I've done it. Don't do it anymore. Realized it's kinda' like Litter. LNT ya' know. Best leave it undone, who needs to agrandize oneself in the wilderness? Live & Learn. Besides, what if it was like near cities, where they graffiti everything, UGGGH!, Right? KZ@

[Lone Wolf]

The shelters themselves spit in the face of "LNT".

[Jaybird]

stayed in the Deer Park Shelter (built in 1938) just south of HOT SPRINGS,NC this past May 2004...it was overflowing with graffitti...most dating back to the 60s....i enjoyed reading most of the "notes"...& all the while wondering if, maybe,...Earl SHaffer had slept there during his legendary,early Walk with Spring!

[Percival]

The word graffiti has negative connotations, so this thread has a bias to begin with. "Graffiti" evokes images of urban spray painting and vandalism. I think there's a difference between hikers leaving their initials and short comments, and graffiti.

[Lilred]

The word graffiti has negative connotations, so this thread has a bias to begin with. "Graffiti" evokes images of urban spray painting and vandalism. I think there's a difference between hikers leaving their initials and short comments, and graffiti.

I agree with Percival. I think it was at Muskrat Creek shelter I saw the name of Ed Garvey. It looked like it had been etched into the wall and someone else had come along and outlined it. There's a lot of history written on those walls. I've seen other names I recognized as well.

[VAMTNHIKER]

The word graffiti has negative connotations, so this thread has a bias to begin with. "Graffiti" evokes images of urban spray painting and vandalism. I think there's a difference between hikers leaving their initials and short comments, and graffiti.

I agree Percival...

and yet I feel a a proper PC response... perhaps due to my Scout upbringing...

I would not feel comfortable leaving any markings on the shelters.

...now if y'all tell me it OK... ::grin::

[The Old Fhart]

Lilredmg-"I think it was at Muskrat Creek shelter I saw the name of Ed Garvey. It looked like it had been etched into the wall and someone else had come along and outlined it"

I don't doubt that Ed Garvey's name is there but I do doubt that it was Ed who put it there. As a lover of the AT it doesn't sound like anything he would do. I have been to both Muskret Creek shelters, the old A-frame and the new shelter which was built in 1995. Ed last attempted a thru hike in 1990 and I met him on the trail just before he dropped off for health reasons. I don't know that he did much hiking after his bypass surgery. I have a feeling that that graffiti falls into the same class as "George Washington slept here."

[Skyline]

I don't see any difference between ugly urban graffiti and ugly shelter graffiti. They are both selfish acts committed by people with big egos who are afraid someone won't remember them five minutes from now.

Shelter registers are the place to leave your name and your thoughts. If you want or need to be thought of as a legend, write a book.

[Footslogger]

Seems like the most common piece of shelter grafitti in 2003 was "SMOKE WEED". Some folks got so outraged by it that they launched a crusade to cover it over and find out "who dunnit". Saw it practically all the way from Springer to Katahdin.

'Slogger

[Tater]

Doesn't bother me. People have been scribbling and drawing on walls of caves and cliff dwellings since the dawn of civilization.

One day, budding anthropologists working on their dissertations will spend thousands of hours coming up with a theory to explain the strange names of the woodsmen who habited these crude dwellings along a remote mountain footpath.

[Floops]

The most humorous that I've seen is the "mouse count" at the Blue Mountain shelter. It was a hash-mark count of all the meeces supposedly killed there since it was started.

Of course, if folks would quit killing the shelter snakes, that wouldn't even have been there. We always seem to try to bring our town values to the trail, with predictable results.

[Chip]

Alot of hard work goes into building a shelter. The Deep Gap and Plumorchard Gap in GA are 2 examples. A new shelter is going up right now at Roaring Fork in NC. I am sure there are other super neat shelters in the other states that I will see as I section hike the AT. There is no place for graffiti in a shelter ! It is written litter on the wall ! It is an eye sore ! There are too many billboards
on the highways of this country, sure don't need to see more graphics out in the back country on shelter walls. I agree with Skyline. If hikers want to leave a message or make their mark then write or draw in the shelter register !!

[Rain Man]

Of course, if folks would quit killing the shelter snakes, that wouldn't even have been there....

Ain't that the truth?! Each shelter needs a pet snake or two. No more mice problems.

Rain Man

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[Tha Wookie]

At Tray Mt. Shelter somebody wrote "Pack it in... Pack it out" in HUGE letters with a magic marker (in a very messy and careless way so it looks like trash). Seems they forgot their own lesson. I didn't even read the rest of the many markings. But I did carry other people's trash out.

[Happy]

Ain't that the truth?! Each shelter needs a pet snake or two. No more mice problems.

Rain Man

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Even the copperheads are not that agressive...let them clear out the mice!