Avoid trailhead theft with a “Climber’s Wallet”

Sadly, trailhead car break-ins happen from time to time.  As you make plans to travel to remote areas, use some common sense when it comes to protecting your keys and cash.  While leaving your wallet stashed in your car is not very smart, neither is lugging your entire keychain and wallet to high camp. Here’s a tip - minimize what you take on the climbing trip before you ever leave home.

Leave town with just a driver’s license, a credit card and maybe $40 in a ziplock bag. For keys, keep a house key and a car key on an additional key ring clipped to your larger key ring, so you can remove them easily for a climbing trip. Leave the other keys at home with the rest of your wallet.

(Tip: the amount of broken window glass on the ground at a trailhead is a good general indication of the safety of parking there.)

And, here's another preventative measure that some hikers have been known to use. Print out the following on a sheet or paper in large letters, and keep it on your dashboard when parked:

"Vehicle under video surveillance. Smile, so are you."

This will hopefully give anybody scoping your car a good reason to not mess with it. There are so many tiny and inexpensive video surveillance cameras out there these days, how do they know if you have one or not?

This is about all you need to carry when you leave the house for a hike or climb.