Criminals.
Elden Nelson (Fat Cyclist) and a few friends spent an afternoon in court the other day answering to charges that they’d thrown a rock off a cliff. The rock didn’t hit anyone or any animals, and it didn’t damage old cave drawings or crush any arrowheads.
We can agree that throwing rocks off cliffs is generally a bad idea. Climbing along hiking trails at High Cliff State Park back in high school we had plenty of people kicking rocks over the edge or tugging at our webbing tied off to sturdy trees. Fortunately the tallest ‘cliff’ was about 20 feet, so the rocks didn’t hurt too badly when they hit your skull. Of course, that’s not always the case.
In Fat Cyclist’s scenario, he’d checked the overhanging cliff for climbers and the landing zone for hikers and then tossed the rock over with the help of a friend. Later on a ranger contacted him about throwing the rock, which he admitted to doing, and ordered him and friends to appear in court to answer to the charges. They were fined about $60 each and sent on their way.
It’s a pretty funny story and worth reading, but what’s mind boggling to me and goes unaddressed in the blog post is how the hell they were caught. It seems the ranger didn’t see him throw the rock, but that someone actually contacted the ranger with a ‘hot tip’ about the illegal act. It begs the question, what kind of a person turns someone in for throwing rocks? And further, what kind of a ranger doesn’t tell the witness to get lost? Then the whole thing gets really out of hand when you find out that they actually went to court, were assigned a state defense attorney, and talked to a judge who had to make serious decisions based on these facts.
ByRocky Thompson
Click on the link to Brandon. He posted the vid on his blog.
When I was in NOLS in the eighties, my instructors loved to get everyone together and push really huge boulders off cliffs. They were NOLS instructors, so we were always checking out wildlife and humanity within a mile or so first, but it was odd. The huge boulders smell great when they land, but huh? We the students did it a couple of days afterward, and got in huge trouble because people were about a half mile away. Oh well.
I always thought it was OK because we were just speeding up erosion - helping to see the future a bit.
Kudos to them for owning up and going into court on this even if they thought it was silly. I find it odd that a defense lawyer was involved–you don’t have one of those for other ticket related offences. Still $60 is about as cheap as a ticket can get AND it must have been a nice break for the defense lawyer NOT to be standing there with a DWI case or some lowlife domestic assualt suspect. I could see some super enviro-crazy getting pissed about the untold tiny animals they squished and the erosion they caused and making a deal out of it, but jeez it must have been a wild game hunter because they must have tailed these guys to their vehicle to get the plates or SOMETHING.