Field Notes

PowerPoint: Mount Rainier's Volunteer Program and Flood Recovery Corps(21.3 Mb--for best results, use right-click-save.)

New PowerPoint Presentation: Last night, Jill Baum (SCA's Mount Rainier Recovery Corps leader) and I were the featured speakers at Mount Rainier's Speaker Series in Cougar Rock Campground. I put together a nice summary of the roles volunteers play at Mount Rainier, especially in the wake of last November's floods, and the vital help we're receiving this summer from the Student Conservation Association. It has good information about our program, and more importantly, a lot of great pictures! Click the link above to download the presentation. It's large, so it'll probably work best if you right-click on the link and save the file to your own computer first.

New Projects: The July calendar is full of projects, and August is filling up rapidly as well! You'll find a summary list on our projects page, and a calendar with links to sign up online on SCA's Mount Rainier Recovery page. There are some exciting projects happening all over the park--now that most of the snow has melted, we're able to get into some areas with really stunning scenery!

Next Newsletter: Watch for our next volunteer newsletter early next week, hopefully Monday. Here's a preview from one of its contributers, George Coulbourn, a long-time volunteer at Carbon River:

"When I’m asked why I volunteer, I respond that I began for altruistic reasons. Having spent many rewarding days in the Park I felt that I had arrived at a good time for pay back. Doesn’t work. Like most volunteer activities, the volunteer gets more that he gives, and the harder he tries, the more he gets."

Statistics: It's too soon for general volunteer program statistics, but I can report that our SCA-led Mount Rainier Recovery Corps has, as of yesterday, worked with 325 public volunteers on 41 different projects so far this year! The summer's just getting started, so I'm confident that we'll set some major records with volunteer participation this year. Thank you all for your help!