Yet another campsite in B.C. has been trashed during the Victoria Day long weekend.
Pictures of a campground at Harrison Lake posted on Facebook this week show empty tents, camping chairs, bottles, boxes and garbage bags scattered all throughout the site that sits right on the shore of the lake.
Maple Ridge resident Allison Marshall, who took the pictures, says she was camping with her family at Wood Lake, about a kilometre away from the trashed beach.
“Friday night on our way in, we saw all these teenagers coming in with booze and everything,” says Marshall.
On Monday, she went down to the beach with her six-year-son and was shocked to see the mess left behind.
“It was absolutely disgusting,” says Marshall. “There were bags all along the beach, in the water, in the trees… It was very wrong.”
Marshall says she removed two truckloads worth of garbage, but there was a lot still left behind.
Garibaldi Secondary student Natalie Lesser told Global News she was one of the campers at the campsite this weekend.
Lesser says more than 300 people were camping at the beach over the weekend, mostly grad students from Maple Ridge.
Most people left Sunday, but a small group of about 20, including Lesser, stayed until Monday.
She says they cleaned up their own garbage. “We did what we could to clean up the campsite, but it was kind of hard for 20 kids to clean up after 300,” says Lesser.
She and other students from the group are planning to go back next week to help with the clean-up.
PHOTO GALLERY: Garbage left at the campground in Harrison Lake
After pictures of the trashed campsite went viral online, a number of residents from the neighbouring area volunteered to help remove the vast amount of garbage still left at the campground.
Abbotsford resident Matt Irvine, who regularly hikes and camps on the lake, says he plans to drive out on Sunday to pick up the mess.
“These kids have gone up there and left a mess for everyone else to clean up,” says Irvine. “It is great place, and it is a shame people think they can just bring in couches, TVs and tents and leave it all behind.”
The Harrison Lake beach is the third campground vandalized during the May Long Weekend.
Piles of debris, garbage and chopped-down trees were discovered at a campground at Koocanusa Lake near Fernie, leaving local residents outraged. It’s believed that campers from Alberta were responsible.
And a group of about 40 adults is believed to be behind a mess left behind at a campground southwest of Peachland.
People living in the Peachland area say they heard gunshots being fired from the site throughout the weekend, and after the group left, massive amounts of garbage and even dead wildlife were found at the site.
B.C. Conservation officers are now looking for suspects.
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