A couple miles upstream from where West Fork Bear Creek joins Bear Creek I found five large bundles of irrigation tubing clearly taken out there for an illegal grow operation. I marked the location and continued to the peak cautiously, imagining hearing people at a few points and keeping my eyes out for any other signs. There was a faint but visible foot path along much of the creek, with some prints that weren't fresh, but didn't seem as old as I would have liked! On the way back down I found two more old green hoses running up the slope of the canyon that were clearly old and hadn't been in use for a long time (holes etc).
I figured the tubing was likely abandoned, but I was doing ok on time on my return so I spent 30 minutes giving myself a blister and consolidating and then cutting through all the tubing to render it useless in case it was being staged for future use.
After that I continued downstream and came across an abandoned camp that was clearly for a grow op. Hard to tell how long it has been there, but it seemed like maybe last year. There were sleeping bags and tarps, propane tanks, cooking pots, food packaging, hand tools (including a nice pick I considered taking with me but figured it was probably contaminated), lots of cups and plastic bags, and a pesticide spray tank.
I was looking around once I found the tubing, but didn't see any signs of cleared or cultivated land. I mostly stuck to the canyon and I think they usually plant hillsides around here. I was surprised this stuff was so obvious. Clearly there isn't a trail this way, but it was only about 2 miles from the Bear Canyon trail and anyone that happened to decide to explore the rather easily accessible West Fork would be pretty much guaranteed to run into it.
I will be reporting the location to the Forest Service. Anyone know what the actual grow season is and when people are most likely to be out there working on this stuff?
