Vintage Merrell NNN BC Leathers

[Cannatonic]

I'm sorry I was only a kid in the 70's…..apparently there was a big cultural tie-in between backcountry skiing and hippie bikers in the those days. Many of the ski clubs in North Conway were started by bikers in the 70's. The town responded by banning them from having parties and otherwise harrassing them.

I was told that in the 60's and 70's people would just live around Tucks for a few months in the spring. People would go down into town every day for food & beer & come back up. Many of them were in biker gangs/clubs. This is basically the way it was at Tucks from the 30's to whenever they banned overnight camping. The northeast backcountry is essentially under lock-down today. They also burned a house down on Mt. Mansfield that was being used by tele skiers, just to stop them from camping there.

similarly, surfers used to actually LIVE at the beach. Climbers lived at Cathedral Ledge in N. Conway.

[Woodserson]

It was also a bit of mayhem... late 19th century early 20th century high-impact camping techniques with modern day population and usage rates-- this was the epoch of camping that gave birth to "Leave No Trace" and the wilderness ethics books. The BC across the northeast got absolutely ravaged in the 70s with high use, with much higher people-counts than what we see today. There are ways to camp in the BC and Nat'l Forests here, legally, and close to good skiing, it's just not necessarily as party-ready as it once was and takes a bit more effort. I'll certainly take the lower-impact ethos that has been cultivated today over the uninhibited camping practices of a few decades ago.

[Cannatonic]

I'll certainly take the lower-impact ethos that has been cultivated today over the uninhibited camping practices of a few decades ago.

Everything's definitely squeeky clean today! Except at the resorts, which have continued to destroy habitat & expand despite a shrinking user base.

Edward Abbey used to throw budweiser cans out the window as he drove around. I'm starting to understand why. He said if they didn't want litter, why did they build the road? Exactly. When Sugarloaf wanted to expand glade terrain, they simply brought in a lumber company to clear-cut an entire mountainside of forest. Or Saddleback, which cut and developed hundreds of acres of pristine alpine forest for condo development, and then went out of business 10 years later. Basically if you have the bankers and politicians behind you, you can do whatever you want. Cover the most beautiful valley floor in the East with strip malls! Just don't try to set up your bivy sack in the wilderness. Then we've got a problem.