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When does abandoned gear become booty? 4-Sep-2016 At 5:53:52 PM Doug

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"When does ABANDONED gear become booty?"
Caps lock on for "abandoned" for emphasis. To me, the word "abandoned" has a sense of permanence attached to it, e.g. when one abandons ship. If you look the word up in the dictionary or in a thesaurus, "forsaken" is generally the first thing that pops up.
This is a bigger thing than just leaving something behind temporarily.
Oftentimes a leader climbs with a second who is not so competent at removing gear and going down to retrieve it could make for all sorts of logistical complications, so the leader decides to leave it for the time being, thinking that he will go back and pick it up sometime soon.
I guess if it subsequently disappears, then that's the way it goes. But if someone bags a piece and then boasts about it back in camp and a: the person who left it there can demonstrate it was theirs and b: they had good reason for leaving it and c: they had the intention of going back for it, then it comes down to how reasonable or how greedy and selfish the person is who retrieved it.