After about 85 nights in Quetico, I've never seen it and hope I never do.

If we pulled up to a site after a wet, long and arduous travel day and found a pack "claiming" a site (and likely others) with no sign of owners -- they meeting up somewhere on the far side of the lake to discuss which of the sites they had claimed they would camp on -- I'm not so sure we would honor the "claim."

We probably WOULD assume "forgotten pack" only because the alternative -- outright rudeness -- would be less tolerable to think about in the wilderness.

If they returned, the tenor of the discussion would depend upon their approach.

Now, if it were tents and tarps, that would be different. That's their site. We'd have never gotten out of our canoes.

Of course, I've never been asked to share a site and have never asked to share a site -- tho we did offer some hot soup to a couple of paddlers passing by our Sunday Lake campsite in the cold and rain this past week.

-- kypaddler