Vandals Spray-Paint Graffiti on Trail To Clara and Marion Lakes
A good samaritan cleaned it up, but authorities have no leads on the culprits
Vandals spray-painted trees, logs and rocks along the trail to Clara and Marion lakes sometime over the weekend of Oct. 6, and the US Forest Service has no leads as to who did it.
Photos of the graffiti were posted on social media and due to the nature of some of the graffiti, some folks came to the conclusion the vandals were a part of a wedding party.
Mason Shuur, Developed Recreation/Winter Sports Program Manager with the USFS, was in the area hiking with his wife on Oct. 6 and saw a wedding party. But he said his agency is not investigating the matter.
“We do not have anyone investigating this as we don’t have any evidence of who actually did it. It was surmised that the wedding party could be a likely suspect but there is no direct evidence to prove that,” wrote Mason Shuur, Developed Recreation/Winter Sports Program Manager with the USFS.
The Clara and Marion Lake trail starts from the parking lot of Mission Ridge Ski & Snowboard Resort, and there were families of youth mountain bikers in town for a race camping in the lot, said Tony Hickok, Chief Marketing Officer for Mission Ridge.
He said there has been a lot of “finger-pointing” at that group, “but the graffiti occurred the day before any of those folks arrived,” he said.
In fact, the graffiti had been cleaned up by the time those folks arrived. Local outdoors enthusiast Mike Rolfs spotted the vandalism on Friday and returned Saturday morning to clean it up.
“I cut off the tagged log ends and painted over everything else with three shades of brown spray paint. Not perfect, but better than white and hot pink,” he wrote.
Rolfs said there must have been hundreds of people who saw the vandalism on Friday.
“I wasn’t the first, just the most irritated,” he wrote.
He also said Mission Ridge has a camera pointed at the parking lot and that could be a resource – if there was an open investigation.
Hickok said what makes finding those responsible so difficult is how popular that trail is. It’s the closest alpine hike and the closest trail that offers access to a mountain lake to Wenatchee, East Wenatchee and the surrounding areas.
He said over the course of an average weekend in the summer, they’ll see more than 50 cars parked that belong to folks hiking that trail.
Everyone agrees the vandalism of shared public resources is unacceptable.
“It’s just super disheartening to think that anyone would think that’s in any way acceptable to do,” Hickok said. “It’s terrible that someone would treat our public spaces, especially such a beautiful place like the Lake Clara Trail, with such disrespect.”
Rolfs actually got to the graffiti before a previously planned work party went out to clean up and maintain the trail on Monday morning. That group was made up of volunteers from a coalition of groups and was not in response to the graffiti.
“Unrelated to the vandalism, Mission Ridge, in partnership with TREAD, Evergreen (Mountain Bike Alliance), and North Cascades Bank performed over 60 hours of volunteer trail maintenance on Lake Clara today,” Mission Ridge CEO Josh Jorgensen wrote on Oct. 9.
Shuur expressed his gratitude for Rolfs’ quick action to address the issue.
“I did hear that Mike Rolfs cleaned it all up, which I am thankful for,” he wrote.
According to RCW 9A.48.090, vandalizing public property is a gross misdemeanor in Washington, but since it’s USFS land that also makes it a federal crime. But there is currently no investigation, no leads, and therefore very little chance anyone will be held responsible.
That’s Where You Come In
The only possibility of finding who is responsible at this point is for folks to share these images in the hopes that someone will recognize the meaning of some of these symbols, and recognize the significance of “GBJ” and “JT,” which seem to be initials.
If you have any information about this or any other incident relating to the vandalism of shared lands and publicly managed forests, you can submit an anonymous tip here or reach Mason Shuur at the Wenatchee River Ranger District at mschuur@fs.fed.us.
Very sad that people disfigure our Forrest’s, walls and buildings!
That stinks. We went down to Tucson and hiked to the top of their “ski area”. We were met there with some distasteful graffiti. I photographed it and went down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out who were the culprits. I came up with two strippers from Las Vegas.