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A Word…* (Patagonia)
The View from Warsaw (Baffler)
* I don’t climb, but I do hike, and the scars of tungsten-tipped hiking sticks are absolutely apparent on rocks along any popular trail. I saw them across the entire Presidential Traverse, Mounts Madison to Pierce, in the White Mountains in New Hampshire in 2017—right as I stabbed my own tungsten-tipped hiking stick onto the same rocks. Leave No Trace doesn’t mean Leave A Little Trace, or Leave No Trace But These Poles Help Me Get Up Here. Chouinard makes an interesting point—if you can’t do it with equipment that doesn’t permanently scar nature, maybe you shouldn’t be there until you can.
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