FOP Leader Handbook

Water pollution, litter, and disturbance to vegetation, wildlife, and other visitors are indicators of the need for a national ethic that protects wild and scenic areas. Techniques designed to minimize these impacts are incorporated into the national Leave No Trace education program. At FOP, we believe strongly in the ethics of Leave No Trace because although individual FOP trips spend only a short time in the wilderness, our collective impact has the potential to be truly destructive. It is the responsibility of each FOP leader to minimize the effect of their trip on the wilderness we enjoy by following the principles of Leave No Trace.

Principles of Leave No Trace

1. Plan Ahead and Prepare
2. Camp and Travel on Durable Surfaces 3. Dispose of Waste Properly
3. Leave What You Find
4. Minimize Use and Impact of Fires
5. Respect Wildlife
6. Be Considerate of Other Visitors

Note: The discussion of LNT principles presented here has been adapted specifically for FOP trips conducted in the northeast. If you’re planning a trip elsewhere, we encourage you to consult Leave No Trace at 1-800-332-4100 or www.lnt.org for more information about LNT practices in other regions.

Plan Ahead and Prepare

1. Keep group size to 12 or fewer people. FOP will ensure this when creating individual FOP groups.
2. Select appropriate equipment. Because FOP provides all group equipment and each FOPper receives a detailed personal equipment list, this essentially involves checking each participant’s gear to ensure its appropriateness and ensuring that you as a leader are comfortable using all group gear. If you have the proper equipment and know how to use it, you are unlikely to need to build inappropriate fires for cooking or overcrowd shelters for sleeping.
3. Repackage food. Get rid of unnecessary packaging in Cambridge, where you can properly dispose of it.
4. Know the area and what to expect. Have a detailed route plan where you camp in established campsites to localize impact as much as possible.
5. Get a sense of your FOPpers’ ability and experience so that you can properly judge how far to hike each day and so that trade-offs between impact concerns and group safety are minimized.

Camp and Travel on Durable Surfaces

Whenever you hike or camp, it is best to use surfaces that are durable or highly resistant to impact. In most areas these surfaces include trails and established campsites.

In Popular Areas, Concentrate Use

Most places FOP travels are high-use areas. As a result, FOP trips need to concentrate activity on trails and in established campsites because these areas have been “hardened” - have already lost their vegetation cover - and continued use causes little additional impact.

When traveling:

• Stay on trails. Hiking off-trail tramples plants, contributes to erosion, and creates wide or multiple paths. Walk right through muddy and wet areas and remain in single file to keep your area of impact as narrow as possible.
• In alpine areas walk only on the trail or on exposed rock. Alpine vegetation is extremely fragile and damage lasts a long time.
• Take breaks on durable surfaces, such as rock or bare ground, or if there is no better option, at a wide spot in the trail.

When camping:

• Choose an established campsite at least 200 feet away from trails and water sources. It is better to use a heavily impacted campsite than one which seems relatively new to human use.
• Choose a site that is somewhat elevated or has a slight slope so that water will not pool if it rains. This makes it unnecessary to dig “trenches” around tarps
• Change to soft-soled shoes like sneakers once you get into camp; the soles of hiking boots can do considerable damage to the site’s vegetation.
• Leave the site exactly as you found it (or better). If you clear your sleeping area of rocks and branches, be sure to replace them before you go.

In Remote Areas, Spread Use

When traveling:

• Utilize durable surfaces and spread out while hiking.
• Avoid hiking off-trail in fragile areas, such as alpine tundra.
• Select an appropriate and durable campsite. If there is no established campsite nearby, choose an area at least 200 feet from water and trails that does not look as though it’s been used as a campsite before. It will then be more likely to return to its original pristine state after you leave.

Avoid Places Where Impact is Just Beginning

Most campsites and walking paths can recover completely from a limited amount of use. However, a threshold is eventually reached where the ability of vegetation to regenerate cannot keep pace with the amount of trampling it receives. Once this threshold is reached, continued use will cause the site to deteriorate rapidly. To prevent this, avoid lightly impacted trails or campsites.

Dispose of Waste Properly

1. Pack It In, Pack It Out
   • Reduce litter at the source - repackage food, batteries, film, etc. to remove excess packaging.
   • Dispose of trash properly. Pack out all waste, food or non-food. Trash should not be burned, buried, or thrown in outhouses.
   • This does not apply to toilet paper, which can be buried in catholes along with poop
2. Properly Dispose of What You Can’t Pack Out
   • Minimize soap and food residues in waste water.
   • Leftover food should be minimized and carried out in plastic bags. Strain dishwater through a strainer or bandanna to catch food particles.
   • Dig a sump hole at least 200 feet from any water sources and pour your dishwater into it. You may also scatter your dishwater over a wide area.
   • Any bathing should be done at least 200 feet away from water (use your water jug to transport water) and with a minimum of soap. Never bathe or wash clothes directly in a water source because it can contaminate drinking water.
   • Be careful with food and odors in bear country. Keep a clean camp and follow FOP procedures for bear bagging.
   • Dispose of human waste properly. Correctly disposing of human waste helps prevent pollution of water sources, the spread of illness such as Giardia, and aesthetic impacts to other visitors.

Leave What You Find

People come to the wilderness to enjoy it in its natural state. Allow others the same sense of discovery by leaving plants, rocks, cultural, and archaeological artifacts as you find them.

1. Minimize site alterations. Leave the area in as good or even more natural condition than you found it.
2. Avoid damaging trees and plants. Do not pick flowers or berries; they may be rare or provide food for animals. Do not carve trees or break branches.
3. Leave natural or cultural artifacts.
4. Avoid disturbing wildlife. Travel quietly and allow any animals encountered space to leave. Never touch or pick up any animal - they may be dangerous or you could harm their interaction with other animals by leaving your scent on them.
5. Reduce your impact on other visitors. Travel and camp quietly and wear neutral colors that do not interfere with the natural surroundings.
6. Respect private land.

Minimize Use and Impact of Fires

Campfire impacts are among the most common and obvious recreational impacts in the wilderness. In backcountry areas of the northeast, fires are generally discouraged, and in any of the region’s alpine zones, they should never be built. This recommendation is based on ecological and aesthetic problems at recreation sites caused by overuse and abuse of fires and wood supplies. Because of cumulative impacts, FOP strongly discourages the use of fires in the backcountry. See also Forest Service Land Use Regulations (p. 28) and FOP fire policies in Part II.

If you do judge it necessary to build a fire, concentrate impact in an existing fire ring. If there isn’t one, use a LNT mound fire (a fire built on top of a 6-8 inch platform of mineral soil). In all cases, use only deadwood and keep the fire small and contained.

Firewood And Cleanup

Standing trees, dead or alive, are home to birds and insects, so leave them intact. Fallen trees also provide bird and animal shelter, increase water holding capacity of the soil, and recycle nutrients back into the environment through decomposition. Stripping branches from standing or fallen trees also detracts from an area’s natural appearance.

• Avoid using hatchets, saws, or breaking branches off standing or downed trees. Dead and down wood burns easily, is easy to collect and leaves less impact.
• Use small pieces of wood no larger than the diameter of an adult wrist that can be broken with your hands.
• Gather wood over a wide area away from camp. Use dry driftwood on rivers and seashores.
• Burn all wood to white ash, grind small coals to ash between your gloved hands, thoroughly soak with water, and scatter the remains over a large area away from camp. Ashes may have to be packed out in river corridors.
• Replace soil where you found it when cleaning up a mound fire.
• Scatter unused wood to keep the area as natural looking as possible.
• Pack out any campfire litter. Plastic items and foil-lined wrappers should never be burned in a campfire.

Respect Wildlife

1. Observe wildlife from a distance. Do not follow or approach them.
2. Never feed animals. Feeding animals damages their health, alters natural behavior, and exposes them to predators and other dangers.
3. Protect wildlife and your food by storing rations and your trash securely in bear bags.
4. Avoid wildlife during sensitive times: mating, nesting, or raising young.

Be Considerate of Other Visitors

1. Respect other visitors and protect the quality of their experience.
2. Be courteous. Yield to others on the trail. We are a large group and can easily seem overpowering on the trail.
3. Step to the downhill side of the trail when encountering horses and other pack animals.
4. Take breaks and camp away from the trails and other visitors.
5. Keep loud sounds and noises to a minimum when around other visitors who may wish to enjoy the sounds of nature alone.
6. Do not weaponize LNT to keep people who have historically not been included in outdoor recreation out of outdoor spaces. Please read this for more.

Leaders neither can nor should bear the responsibility for LNT alone, because every- one in the group interacts with the environment throughout the trip. Your responsibility as a leader is not to pick up every grain of rice yourself, but to educate your FOPpers on the why’s and how’s of minimum impact, both its seriousness and its techniques so that they either do not drop the rice, or pick it up themselves. We recommend a short discussion of LNT principles in Cambridge or on the bus, coupled with on-the-trail teaching in the first days as topics naturally come up. It’s a good feeling when you can trust your FOPpers to leave the wilderness they travel through unspoiled.

NOTE: As strictly as we want you to adhere to Leave No Trace guidelines, group safety always comes before the safety of the environment.