Hiker Finds Explosives

San Diego hiker stumbles on unidentified bombs, uses GPS coordinates to relay location to authorities

Hikers flirt with dangerous sightings all the time—we thrill to the presence of bears, mountain lions, precipitous peaks, and raging rivers. But it'd be a rare hiker who's pumped about finding a bomb in the wild.

Nevertheless, on Saturday an unidentified California hiker stumbled upon an unidentified weapons cache (disturbingly called "some sort of military explosive" by local media) while trekking just north of Mission Trails Regional Park Saturday near San Diego. But this hiker didn't freak out and run away, and he didn't start pelting it with rocks. Instead, he simply tagged the point and relayed GPS coordinates to the authorities.

We know a bomb squad followed the hikers coordinates out to the scene, but officials haven't revealed the outcome. They report that in the past, the area had been used for live artillery practice and for WWII-era pilots to drop dud bombs.

Could this cool and collected GPSer have been a BACKPACKER reader? If so, reveal yourself, for you deserve commendation for making our explosives-littered wildernesses just a little safer.

I know for sure it wasn't any of my friends, or else this story would've made a much bigger bang.

—Ted Alvarez

via The Goat