[pct-l] Mountain Education's Spam Schedule

[Bob Bankhead]

Jon:

Those of us who have been around the AT, CDT, PCT, the PCTA , this forum, and other long distance hikers' forums for some time know these people, often on a personal, face-to-face basis. They are all fellow long-distance hikers with several thousand miles under their boots. They were here long before they became entrapeneures with their own hiking-related cottage industries. They've earned the right to be here. You will also notice that many of the forum members willingly champion, recommend, and purchase their products or attend their seminars/gatherings. Constructive criticisms and/or reviews of their products or services have appeared as well.

If you consider their posts to be spam, it is your right to delete said posts without reading them. It's also your right to send the offending person a private email expressing your displeasure at what you view as unwarrented or excessive commercial advertising.

What you do not have the right to do is to use this forum to launch public, vitrolic personal attacks against other members of this forum . That will get you banned, and rightly so.

Grow up, or please go play somewhere else.

Wandering Bob

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jon Danniken 
  To: pct-l at backcountry.net 
  Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 5:42 PM
  Subject: Re: [pct-l] Mountain Education's Spam Schedule


  K Murray wrote:
  >
  >... how do you explain your post here?

  This problem is not only limited to Ned Tibbits spamming this list (and
  other
  backpacking forums) for his Mountain Education company, but is indicative of
  what a growing number of entities who insinuate themselves with the PCT are
  doing.

  You need look no farther than what Greg Hummel does with the ADZPCTKOP to
  see an example of this. By encouraging and providing a place for commercial
  interests at the event (Leki and Six Moon Designs, amongst others), the
  collusion between those who have established themselves as structures within
  the hiking community and corporations motivated by profit becomes
  established.

  Look at what Ron Moak is doing, President of the ALDHA-West, and oh, just
  coincidentally, the founder and owner of Six Moon Designs, which makes tents
  and other gear for distance hikers. That such a man assumes such a position
  of leadership in a hiking organization while profiting from it is
  despicable.

  Remember the row at Dick Cheney's former involvement with Halliburton and
  the company's involvement in the Iraq war? Imagine how much worse it would
  have been had Mr. Cheney been the founder and owner of Halliburton, as Ron
  Moak is with his company.

  Beyond these reasons, they are encouraging this trail to become populated by
  individuals whose sole expertise in hiking is that they plunked down money
  to pay for their trip, similar to the "culture" of well-funded "mountaneers"
  that currently infest the slopes of Everest.

  As I have stated in the past, people need to provide for their own
  experience insofar as hiking a trail such as the PCT is concerned, and
  spoon-feeding them what they need to know for cash money goes against the
  very nature of being self-reliant enough to hike on a trail.

  What men like Ned Tibbits, Greg Hummel, and Ron Moak are doing is obvious;
  it is the whoring out of the PCT for their own financial gain and/or
  other motives they have. What boggles my mind is that individuals such as
  yourself do not see this for what it is, the carving up of the PCT for
  commercial exploitation, and take a stand against it.

  Jon