June 5th is National Trails Day!

American Hiking Society's signature trail awareness program, National Trails Day (NTD), inspires the public and trail enthusiasts nationwide to seek out their favorite trails to discover, learn about, and celebrate the 200,000+ miles of outdoor trails in our country.

Mount Rainier's many trails provide access to the natural world for recreation, inspiration and education. Trails provide opportunities to breathe fresh air, get hearts pumping, escape from daily stresses and maintain overall health. NTD represents years of hard work, dedication and countless volunteer hours contributed by individuals, nonprofit groups and community organizations across America. During last year's NTD 2009 nationwide volunteers contributed nearly 180,000 volunteer labor hours to our nation’s trails, worth an estimated $3.6 million.

Here at Mount Rainier we have several projects taking place on NTD.

Washington Trails Association
For those looking to spend some time specifically on the trails the WTA is planning on working at Glacier Basin Trail. The Glacier Basin Trail sustained extensive damage during the storms of November 2006. Volunteers have spent the last three summers helping the park relocate the trail away from the river and on to the hillside. We still need your help to complete this approximately 2-mile relocation, which will include fun new trail construction tasks!

Longmire Campground Cleanup

We are looking for volunteers to help get our Volunteer Campground ready for the summer season. Anyone interested can meet at the Longmire community building at 9:30am on June 5th.

To join this work party click here.

REI of Tacoma - *Closed to the public
This group will be joining us on NTD to work at Kautz and Twin Firs Trail. If your company or group is interested in volunteering together we will have more opportunities throughout the summer. Give us a call and we'll set up a project for you!