She Returned From A Summit Hike To Find Her Hiking Poles Missing, Then Spotted Another Hiker Using Them And Confronted Him
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Hiking poles can be a great help when you are going up mountains or hiking for long distances, but many people don’t want them on the last trek to the summit of a hike.
What would you do if you had left your hiking poles in a rest area before the final stretch, and when you came back, they were gone and you saw someone who had the exact same poles as you had?
That is what happened to the couple in this story, so he confronted the guy and got his poles back, but he is worried that he was out of line for confronting him since he wasn’t 100% sure he stole the poles.
It seems to me that he did the right thing. Read through the full story below and see what you think.
AITA: Confrontation over stolen hiking poles
Me (29M) and my girlfriend (27F) went on a hike and each took a pair of trekking poles with us.
Let’s see what happened.
When we got near the summit of the mountain we decided to leave our poles because we were a little worried about lightning and also we wanted to be able to use our hand for the scramble.
Between when we left our poles and when we got back to them we saw a total of 4 groups of people, one of which was a guy by himself who was the only on after us on the trail (we got a late start). This guy looked to be around 21 or 22 and had trekking poles I didn’t look too closely at.
The one guy who had poles seems like a good suspect.
When we got back to where our poles were, mine were there, but my girlfriends were gone. We looked for like 5 minutes in the surrounding area and then decided they must have been taken and left.
About 10 minutes later we met up with one of the groups who had been in front of us, none of them had our poles and when we told them we had a pair of ours stolen they commented that maybe that guy by himself had taken them.
So, this guy has seen the poles.
About an hour later as we’re still making our way down the trail we stop for a break and the kid that was behind us catches up.
Initially he doesn’t approach us and talks to us from a distance but when it’s clear we’re gonna break for a while he decides to pass us.
At this point we mention that our poles had been stolen and he mentions that he had seen them on his way up.
There is going to be no way to prove it.
I take a look at his poles and am like 99% sure they’re ours. Same brand, brand new like ours were, and they have the same smudge on the handle that my girlfriend had commented on before the hike.
I mention it and he says “yeah I thought you might say that, my dad got me these after I hiked [another peak near us]”
The guy was obviously lying.
I don’t believe him but he continues on. We kept a pretty good pace and kept up with him and I decided to confront him again by the parking lot, basically tell him I was sure those were our poles, if he wanted to steal them I couldn’t stop him but he could just leave them and we’d take them.
He still insisted they were his but did leave them. I feel like I was in the right but on the slim chance it’s just a crazy coincidence part of me feels like a jerk.
AITA?
He definitely did the right thing by confronting him. If he wasn’t lying, he wouldn’t have left the poles behind, that is for sure.
Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.
This commenter makes a good point.
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Yup, it is obvious that he stole them.
This commenter is right.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a landlord who has a problem with a car-dealer tenant bringing home a different car every night.
The way he handled it was perfect.
He wouldn’t have left them behind if they were his poles.
He was right to confront him, and he handled it perfectly.
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