7 Marks on a Tree You Should NEVER Ignore in the Woods (From a Retired Park Ranger)

📕 Stay Found, my field guide for anyone who heads outdoors: what to carry, what to leave on the kitchen table, and what to do in the first hour if somebody doesn't come back → https://stayfoundbook.com Seven marks on a tree you should never ignore in the woods, from a hole the size of a pencil tip to a trunk bent like an elbow. Six of them are warnings. The last one may have been giving directions. I'm Cliff Hollis. Thirty-two seasons as a backcountry ranger in the mountain West, the last fifteen running search and rescue. Every case here comes from park, forest service and news reports. WHERE IT TURNED UP AND WHAT TO DO 7. D-shaped holes in ash bark. Found: first in Michigan in 2002, later in 35 states. Do: keep walking, don't rest under thin-crowned ash on a gusty day, buy firewood where you burn it. 6. Smooth, rubbed bark with hair in it. Found: nearly 4,800 bear rubs in one survey of northwest Montana. Do: if the hair is fresh, talk loudly, keep your group together and camp somewhere else. 5. Gray pines with no needles. Found: whole slopes of Colorado and southern Wyoming, and on the Monarch Lake trail near Granby. Do: park and pitch well away from them, stay out when it blows. 4. Shelf mushrooms on a trunk. Found: the kind of rot they warn about snapped a 50-foot fir on the Sandbeach Lake trail, Rocky Mountain National Park, 2007. Do: one conk can mean about forty feet of rot inside. Don't camp under it. 3. A spiral strip of torn bark. Found: a lone pine near Sunset Point, Bryce Canyon, 2011. Do: never shelter under a tall, lone tree in a storm. 2. Black, burned trunks still standing. Found: the Fairy Falls trail in Yellowstone, 2014, a pine dead since the 1988 fires. Do: stay out of burned country on windy days and watch for hidden stump holes. 1. A tree that grows sideways, then straight up. Found: Gateway Park in Dallas, Glencoe on Chicago's North Shore, and Big Bend. Do: don't carve it, don't hang a hammock on it, photograph it and report it. Stay found, folks. #ParkRanger #HikingSafety #NationalParks