Former Recovery Corps leader now working with Artists as First Responders in Peru

Hanna O'Connell helps with
Wonderland Trail restoration in 2007

I have a number of Google news alerts set up, including, of course, one that looks for a combination of the terms "volunteer" and "Mount Rainier." I get a lot of notices about volunteers in Mount Rainier, Maryland, and my own blog posts turn up frequently, but I also occasionally come across news about alumni of our volunteer program and the things they've gone on to do elsewhere in the world.

Such in the case with this pair of articles on the website of the "Scene" newspaper in Wisconsin, featuring our own Hanna O'Connell, one of the crew leaders for our Student Conservation Association-led Mount Rainier Recovery Corps back in 2007. Hanna is now working on a degree in International Relations at the University of Wisconsin, but has not given up her passion for volunteer work; she's now working with an organization called Artists as First Responders, helping with flood recovery efforts in Peru. It's not clear from the articles, but it sounds like she might be one of the founders of the group.

It sounds like wonderful and compassionate work, and all of Hanna's old friends here at Mount Rainier wish her well. Follow these links to learn more about what she's up to:

Artists as First Responders born from trip to Peru
Hanna in Peru: Back to the Sacred Valley
Artists as First Responders (A1R)

Mount Rainier volunteer photographer wins Olympus Photo Contest!

Congratulations to John Chao, who has been taking photographs as a volunteer at Mount Rainier for several years, and whose photograph has been selected as one of fifty winners of the Natural Resource Program Center's Olympus Photo Contest! John's photo, of volunteers working on trail reconstruction in 2007 under the direction of the Student Conservation Association's Mount Rainier Recovery Corps, was selected from more than 700 entries, and wins for our volunteer program a brand new Olympus Stylus Tough-8000 (waterproof, shock proof and freeze proof) camera!

For more information about the contest, and to see all fifty of the winning photographs, go to http://home.nps.gov/applications/digest/headline.cfm?type=Announcements&id=8422. John Chao's photographs can also been enjoyed at http://www.photoshelter.com/c/johnchaophoto and http://www.imagekind.com/%22john+chao%22_poster.

SCA Mount Rainier Recovery Corps 2008 Fact Sheet

Here's another document that provides some excellent "behind the scenes" information about the highly successful volunteer year we just completed. I've mentioned some of these statistics before, but this time they're accompanied by a lengthy and informative "key," written by Mount Rainier Recovery Initiative program manager Jill Baum. I think you'll find it interesting reading:

SCA Mount Rainier Recovery Corps 2008 Fact Sheet
10/14/08 final draft (stats through 9/28)

Volunteer projects: 107
Volunteers: 657
Volunteer hours (project start to project end): 3,871
Corps hours (includes corps training and Embedded Member service): 7,104
Public training workshop hours: 2,126
Total MRR hours: 13,101

Start date: 5/19/08
End date: 9/29/08
Corps members: 10 (5 Team, 5 Embedded)
Additional interns in basecamp: 3 (plus many guests)
On-site staff: 3 (PD, Coordinator, Cook) (plus periodic assistant cooks)
Wall tents: 12
Park housing units: 3
Kitchen trailers: 1
Vehicles: 5

Snow shoveling person days: 105
Meadow roving person days: 521
Frontcountry campgrounds opened: 4 (Longmire, Cougar Rock, Ohana, White River)
Campsites cleared/maintained: 266
Backcountry campsites constructed: 1 (Pyramid Creek)
Historic shelters rehabbed: 1 (Indian Bar)
Sherpa projects: 9 @ 6600 lbs.
Hours logged by remote soundscape sensors: 646
Soundscape sites logged: 33
Amphibians counted: 1486
Archaeology sites tested: 1/ 4 days/ 5 miles
Weed eradication person days: 130
Exotic plants eradicated: 17,951
Dump truck loads gravel hauled: 8
Seed species collected: 11
Seedlings + salvaged material planted: ~6,000 + 600 sq. ft.
Feet of trails brushed/raked: 75,500
Feet of trail tread repaired: 790
Check steps constructed: 36
Rock steps constructed: 30
Bridges constructed: 5 @ 80 ft.
Retaining walls constructed: 8 @ 118 ft.
Square feet of flood debris cleared for bridge footing: 150
Park signs installed: 22
Youth directly engaged in service: 160
Organizations directly engaged in service: 17

The story behind the stats…

Volunteer projects: This total is limited to projects coordinated by the Corps but includes the numerous trainings we offered this year (see below). Projects ranged from an hour or two to 5 days in length. Most were one-day projects that generally ran from 9:00 – 4:00.

Volunteers: Our volunteers came as individuals, families or with groups. The number of volunteers on any given day ranged from 1 to 102, with an average of about 4 - 8 serving on a particular project.

Volunteer hours: This number is comparable to 2007 (13,344 hours).

Corps hours: Corps time was spent leading volunteers, completing response team projects and assisting in a myriad of ways while embedded within park departments. This total also includes initial and ongoing corps training hours.

Public training workshop hours: Training opportunities were open to volunteers, partners and NPS staff – all of whom took advantage of them. They included Meadow Roving, Advanced Meadow Roving, Soundscape Monitoring, Wilderness First Aid (x2), Wilderness First Responder and Crosscut Saw Certification. Multi-day trainings included meals and camping in the Longmire Campground. All costs were underwritten by our grant from Boeing – thank you!

Total MRR hours: This number is also comparable to 2007, despite the smaller corps. This is due in part to the fact that the entire group served for the same timeframe whereas last year’s program incorporated multiple start and end dates.

Start date: Who could have predicted that we would have had snow on the ground in Longmire well into June, and throughout much of the park well into August? This made for a challenging start to the program, including the need to base operations out of the Lions Club facility in Ashford for the first week and a half. We also spent most of our National Trails Day projects shoveling snow!

End date: The program came in like a lion and left like a lamb, with unseasonably warm temperatures much of the final week and stunning mountain views most of the time. We even managed to dry out the wall tents in time to store them for the winter.

Corps members: Our corps members came from a wide variety of backgrounds, but all were selected based on their desire and ability to lead others, flexibility, maturity and initiative. They were matched early on to team or embedded positions based on their experience and interests. This created a somewhat disjointed group, but with common underlying expectations and a strong base structure in place. 9 of the 10 successfully completed the program, with one unfortunately choosing to leave a few weeks early.

Additional interns in campground: Due to anticipated housing shortages, initially most park SCA interns were slated to take up residence with the corps in our Longmire basecamp. In the end only 3 actually did – and they were wonderful to have around, despite being on different schedules and supervised by park staff rather than SCA (although they very much viewed the corps staff as additional supervisor – as did a fair number of other SCA interns, for that matter).

On-site staff: Continuing from last year and remaining in the park over the winter, the Program Director was joined by a new Field Coordinator in early May and by a Kitchen Coordinator a week later. An Assistant Cook joined the staff for the first month of shared orientation and training with the Native Plant and Corps Trails teams. The same person returned to assist with our large WFA public training weekend in July. We were extremely thankful to have been able to bring on a last-minute replacement cook for the WFR training week in early September, as well.

Wall tents: We added 3 more tents and platforms this year in anticipation of housing additional interns. While the housing crisis abated, we did use the tents for trainers and guests and are leaving behind a fully-functional basecamp for the park to use in the future.

Park housing units: We again relied heavily on the Community Building for warmth and meeting space, as well as the limited but functional capacity of the downstairs apartment kitchen. We mostly used the upstairs apartment for additional kitchen storage and for visiting instructor housing. The Program Director lived across the river in a small house but continued to eat most meals with the corps and to spend a significant amount of time in the Community Building, especially during trainings.

Kitchen trailer: Due to the initial poor weather and periodic large training groups, the kitchen trailer was primarily used as pack out and storage space rather than as the primary basecamp kitchen. Nonetheless, it is a significant asset and has been restocked with equipment to serve a dozen or so folks when it emerges from winter hibernation.

Vehicles: Given that corps members headed in half a dozen directions on most days, 5 vehicles served us quite well. We often used the 12-passenger van to move bigger groups of people but relied especially on our trucks, whose beds proved to be invaluable for hauling gear and materials.

Snow shoveling person days: (See “Start Date” above) This number was calculated by dividing by 8 (a typical “day”) the total number of hours spent shoveling snow. Volunteers were instrumental in opening the campgrounds and Sunrise, where snow drifts exceeded 10 feet and many pathways were completely buried.

Meadow roving person days: Two of our five embedded members served as Meadow Rover coordinators, one at Paradise and the other at Sunrise. While they had very different experiences, they each served to help focus the Rover program and train many new Rovers. The entire corps helped rove on the Independence Day and Labor Day weekends, although poor weather brought unexpectedly low numbers of visitors each holiday.

Frontcountry campgrounds opened: This year’s “opening” projects consisted of clearing snow and debris at Ohanapecosh, shoveling out Cougar Rock on National Trails Day, and working on flood restoration at White River. Restoration work also continued in the Longmire Campground, where two dozen “new” campsites were opened for volunteer use. We were also thrilled to have brand new showers constructed in a renovated comfort station – thanks, Maintenance!

Campsites cleared/maintained: (See “Frontcountry Campgrounds” above)

Backcountry campsites constructed: We spent one day helping the backcountry rangers relocate Pyramid Camp (for which a NPLD group sherpaed up the new toilet parts last year!).

Historic shelters rehabbed: Once again, the corps thoroughly enjoyed working with the backcountry carpenters – especially in this stunning location in early fall. They installed a drainage system and rebuilt the floor of this historic shelter.

Sherpa projects: Volunteers again proved invaluable as an efficient way to move materials where they were required on projects. This summers’ hauling projects included cement for bridge footings, planks for new bridge decking, shingles for a backcountry cabin and soundscape equipment – including three, 40 pound batteries that were carried out to sites at the beginning of the season and back to Longmire at the end.

Hours logged by remote soundscape sensors: The mission of the remote soundscape sensors (see “Sherpa” above) was to record ambient sound at remote locations. Program glitches and freezing weather affected the ability of the equipment to some extent, but significant baseline data successfully has been added to this new program.

Soundscape sites logged: This project was a great way to increase the “citizen science” component of the volunteer program. Following an information and training session, volunteers were equipped to visit the pre-selected soundscape sites, sit for an hour while recording their sound observations, then continue on hiking or head back out.

Amphibians counted: Our member embedded with Natural and Cultural Resources assisted with a variety of projects including several amphibian surveys. Not surprisingly, the backcountry lakes proved to be much more bountiful than those near roads. These volunteers also got to spend the night in several backcountry cabins.

Archaeology sites tested: A corps member and one of our basecamp interns spent a week assisting with the archaeological survey of the Carbon River road area, for which post-flood plans are being considered. They enjoyed the change of pace and learning an entirely new skill set.

Weed eradication person days: Removing exotic plants continues to be an excellent way to involve volunteers at Rainier, particularly large groups or those with somewhat limited time, since often the thickest areas are near roadsides or heavily impacted zones.

Exotic plants eradicated: The primary targeted species included Oxeye Daisy, Bull Thistle and Foxglove.

Dump truck loads gravel hauled: The ground seemed to be saturated everywhere this year, especially up in the Paradise area, where we also helped to fill several new bridge approaches and a turnpike.

Seed species collected: Berries! Volunteers helped to collect native plant species, including Huckleberry, Salmonberry and (yikes!) Devils Club. These will be dried and propagated in the greenhouse or spread as needed near where they were collected.

Seedlings planted: Park staff and volunteers worked furiously to rehab the Paradise construction sites, including landscaping the new visitor center in time for its opening on October 10th. Plantings included both seedlings grown in the greenhouse and plants salvaged from the area before construction began.

Feet of trails brushed/raked: Much of this work was accomplished by the Forest Service Discovery Teams, comprised of local teens from the Randle area.

Feet of trail tread repaired: Unlike last year’s major emphasis on trail reroutes and therefore tread construction, this year’s projects were a bit more specific and sometimes included follow-up repair to new sections after they had ‘seasoned’ for a year.

Check steps constructed: Many of these were on the Kautz Creek Trail, where we worked hard to repair and preserve the tread.

Rock steps constructed: Nearly all of these were on the Kautz Creek Trail, leading in both directions from the new footbridge that crosses what remains of the old river channel. Working with rock is an art that we tried to pass on to many volunteers this year. The results of their labor can be enjoyed for decades to come (or at least until the next time Kautz Creek changes its course).

Bridges constructed: Bridge projects seemed to be an endless need this summer, from new footlogs to replacement 3-stringer bridges. We worked on a couple that required hefty hikes into the backcountry and more time than anticipated to finish, but the corps perservered.

Retaining Walls constructed: Along with polish-up tread work, it became evident that retaining walls also were needed in several key locations (Stevens Canyon, Kautz Creek, Trail of Shadows). These varied greatly in size and material.

Square feet of flood debris cleared for bridge footing: This is a fancy way of saying we dug a giant hole down to bedrock to allow the park trail crew to anchor a new bridge footing near Paradise River Camp... By some miracle, the corps members and volunteers on this project enjoyed it thoroughly!

Park interpretive signs installed: Many of these signs required several people to lift them… We also did some sleuthing to figure out what went where, but the corps labeled them and left clear instructions and maps for whomever takes this on next.

Youth directly engaged in service: A goal for this summer was to actively engage youth in park stewardship, which we did with resounding success. Many of the youth counted in this total were here for multiple weeks while others came with groups that asked to add a service component to their summer visit.

Organizations directly engaged in service: Once again, we were sometimes inundated with groups. They included corporate groups, youth groups, Scout groups, recreational groups and special groups like the Japanese Volunteers in the Parks program. We felt honored to get to know so many diverse and dedicated volunteers.

The end of an era (and beginning of another)

Octobers are always bittersweet in the volunteer office. The summer season is wrapping up, the leaves are turning brilliant colors, and there's a chill in the air. (Are those snowflakes drifting through the branches?) At the same time, a seasonal program like ours can get pretty intense in the summer time, and we look forward to the "slow" months to step back, catch our breath, recharge, and plan for the next year. That explains the lack of posts to this blog over the past weeks: there's less to report than usual, but there are also a lot of distractions not present earlier in the summer. In case you weren't aware, we opened a brand new visitor center last week, and next week I'll be out of the office all week participating in our interpretive program's annual staff retreat, helping to set strategy for the future of the volunteer program. When I am in the office, I've been madly typing e-mails and making phone calls, wrangling volunteer hours in preparation for the end-of-(fiscal)-year reports due on October 31--an all-consuming process. We also have a major conference of the National Association for Interpretation coming up in mid-November in Portland to prepare for. So, whew, it's autumn, but things haven't really slowed down much yet!

October is also bittersweet for a more important reason. The last of our Mount Rainier Recovery Corps members left the park at the end of September, and Jill Baum and Ginny Galbreth have stayed on for a few weeks just to wrap up the program. When I came in to catch up on some e-mail today, the last pile of supplies was sitting on my chair: radios, records, uniform shirts.

After almost two years of working with Jill Baum, it hardly seems possible that the Mount Rainier Recovery Initiative has finally come to a close. It's been a tremendously successful partnership, one that has not only gotten a huge amount of work done, but one that has made major strides toward making volunteerism an integral part of everything we do at Mount Rainier National Park. I'm grateful to Jill for her leadership in this important enterprise, and am also grateful for her friendship. I will miss the wonderful young people she recruited over the past two years, and I will miss her most of all.

Of course, this is not the end of volunteerism at Mount Rainier, nor the end of our partnership with SCA, nor even the end of our work on flood recovery. Our volunteer program continues, better than ever; I'm dying to share with you the statistics from this past year, once they're finally compiled, because I suspect they're going to be impressive. We will continue to hire SCA interns, as we always have, including, hopefully, several who will work directly with volunteers next summer (so keep an eye on SCA's recruitment pages for the announcement of these positions). And flood recovery continues full-speed-ahead at Carbon River, Glacier Basin, and elsewhere.

When we held our farewell gatherings for Jill, I presented her with a copy of Ruth Kirk's book "Sunrise to Paradise," signed by people all over the park. I chose this book as a memento because it captures the spirit and history of Mount Rainier's first hundred years as a national park--and because Jill and her fellow leaders from SCA, over the past two years, have helped write the preamble to the next chapter in Mount Rainier's history. It's one that will continue to be written, in years to come, by each of you who participate as volunteers. I believe that we are at the beginning of an era: one in which volunteers, more than ever before, work together with professional park rangers in stewardship of this grand place.

Thank you, Jill, for your part in making it happen.

Some preliminary statistics for the Mount Rainier Recovery Corps

October will be a month of gathering statistics for the past year of volunteer activity, and as the numbers come in, I will share them with you. Here are some great preliminary numbers for the Student Conservation Association's Mount Rainier Recovery Corps. They do not include the many, many volunteers who participated at the park in other ways--just the ones who volunteered with our SCA crew leaders.

2008 included:

• 105 person-days of snow removal
• 521 person-days of meadow roving
• 8 "sherpa projects" (carrying supplies to work locations in the backcountry), involving transport of 6,400 pounds of gear
• 33 Soundscape Monitoring sites monitored
• 130 person-days of weed eradication
• 5 trail bridges built
• 15 organizations worked with
• 118 youth volunteers worked with, many of them for periods of weeks or months
• 1,486 amphibians surveyed
• 111 total projects

The Corps worked with close to 670 individual volunteers, which is only about 30 short of last year's number--very gratifying given the lower level of urgency this year and the fact that our Recovery Corps itself was much smaller than last year!

Wilderness intoxication

I just came in from hiking up the Kautz Creek Trail with Jill Baum of SCA and Jenn Glyzinski of our NPS trail crew, inspecting the work that our SCA-crews-in-training have been doing there. The smell of fresh cedar and alder, mingled here and there with a faint, acrid whiff of skunk cabbage, is intoxicating. I could stay out on such trails in the sun and the breeze all day and be quite content.

It is in fact therapeutic after this week we've had. Anyone who follows this blog is probably also aware of the Search and Rescue we've been busy with all week. Besides the long hours and the loss of two and a half days at a time of year when most of us are already behind on our work, these events can be emotionally exhausting and it's good to get refreshed in the wilderness. It's worth remembering that that's what drew the individuals in this incident onto the mountain as well--that same intoxication with wilderness, and a choice to accept as their allotment of risk the challenges of hiking in the mountains, rather than, say, sailing or motorcycling or playing football or skiing or driving or any of a thousand other things that don't attract as much attention when they go wrong.

Those are my thoughts as I hike through the sun-dappled forest under the merrily dancing alder leaves, listening to the creek tumble along through the canyon beside me...

More real volunteer news in a bit.

Farewells

It's been an emotional week for this humble volunteer program manager. While there's still a good month of decent weather left for trail building and other projects, school is starting and many of our summer volunteers are heading for home. We say good bye this week to many of our interpretive volunteers, for instance. James "Longmire" Anderson spent the summer working with our interpretive staff as a Student Conservation Association Intern. Rachel Landman rounds out her term as an intern through the Geologic Society of America. Ruth Graves completes a difficult summer that began with personal tragedy and ends in a triumph of perseverance and dedication.

This morning, five members of our Mount Rainier Recovery Corps left for the airport, after a hard working summer helping to rebuild trails and serve as crew leaders for public volunteers. I've worked closely with these guys, and they've earned both my friendship and respect. When we came up with the idea for the Recovery Corps last winter in partnership with the Student Conservation Association, none of us knew what shape it would take, nor how productive it would turn out to be, nor how successfully these kids would reach out to the park's neighbors and welcome them as partners in the park's reconstruction. It's like handing chisels to fourteen people and setting them to work on a block of marble, recruiting five hundred helpers to assist them, and coming back four months later to see that they've all crafted Michelangelo's "David." It's like watching your son grow up to do things you never dreamed he was capable of. Nine members of the Corps remain, with projects already scheduled for hundreds more people to help with, and plenty of room for more.

I also said farewell today to ten members of the Japan Volunteers-in-Parks Association (J-VIPA), a group that has been bringing students from Waseda University in Tokyo to help with volunteer projects since 1994. I've worked with this remarkable group before, but this year was special, because for the first time my family and I hosted one of the students in our home, a young woman named Naoko Inoue. She arrived last Sunday and left today, yet in that short time, she became part of our family, fascinating my two sons with stories about Japan, language lessons, and demonstrations of traditional clothing. On Wednesday we all went to watch the Mariners play at Safeco Field. Oh, and she and the other students in her Study Tour also did a lot of work in the park, pulling hundreds of weeds in the greenhouse, building two dozen picnic tables, and setting up and dedicating a "bio toilet" in the Cougar Rock Campground that had been donated by a Japanese environmental non-profit group.

Many extraordinary people pass through our volunteer program every year, from throughout the Puget Sound, across the country, and around the world. We build friendships, share experiences, and get some work done. Saying good bye is always hard. And yet, the friendships continue, and over the years those of us who stick around accumulate quite a widespread group of friends, and the planet keeps getting a little smaller.

Many more volunteers remain, and return week after week, month after month, or year after year. I have come to know people through the volunteer program who have become close personal friends, people I love and trust and respect. They are the strong beating heart of our volunteer program. I'm grateful that they live close by, and aren't going anywhere any time soon.

Meanwhile, to my friends who are departing this week: Arigato.

Off to Indian Henry's

Volunteers Charlie Devine, Taylor Barbrack, and David Barbrack join Mount Rainier Recovery Corps members Sam Keller, Hannah O'Connell, and Susan Simpson as they prepare for five days of trail repairs near Indian Henry's Hunting Ground starting August 1st.

Focus on the Wonderland

The Wonderland Trail suffered tremendously from the floods of last fall. Because it circles the entire park, many sections of the trail are damaged, and hiking the whole trail is not being permitted this summer as a result. In some sections of the trail, bridges were taken out by the floodwaters, making the trail impassable. In other parts, whole sections of trail were washed away, leaving drop-offs where trail used to be. In these areas, it’s necessary to plan and construct a “reroute”--an entirely new trail to replace the old one that was washed out. The Mount Rainier Recovery Corps is working alongside the park’s trail crew so that this great trail can be reopened....

Read more by Mount Rainier Recovery Intern Susan Newman on SCA's Rainier News Blog!

2,000 Set Out to Care for Rainier: Students Lead Repairs on Storm-Damaged Rainier

Looking like a Civil War re-enactment, nine canvas tents sit in a row in the middle of an abandoned campground at Mount Rainier National Park. Lined up next to the moss-covered remains of picnic tables, under towering Douglas firs, the tents and a converted carnival-concession trailer are base camp for the crew leaders who will be directing an army of 2,000 volunteers on the mountain this summer....

Read more in an article by Colin McDonald on the website of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer!

Field Notes

Things are now humming along smoothly with Mount Rainier's volunteer program. Our long-term summer volunteers are comfortably trained and working wonders alongside their counterparts in green-and-grey; and our partnership with the Student Conservation Association is paying off with large numbers of public volunteers and volunteer hours. Many of the trails are being repaired, and the flood recovery map maintained by the Washington Trails Association has more and more blue markers on it every day.

In fact, we're hearing from visitors, more and more, that they don't see what the problem is, because so little of last winter's storm damage is still obvious to the casual eye. Our road crews patched up mileposts 5 and 9 to the point where you can't tell the road was undermined a few months ago. The Kautz Creek bridge looks a little odd with barely a trickle of water flowing under it, but the new 12-foot culverts a quarter mile to the east look like they've always handled the full flow of the river. Major damage remains on Highway 123, but a long stretch of the road remains closed entirely to public traffic while an estimated 1600 loads of rock are delivered by massive trucks to fill the gaping holes in the road. The West Side Road and Carbon River Road are also off limits to cars, and no one knows yet when that will change, if ever.

You can't hike up Highway 123 for safety reasons, but a short walk up the West Side Road, Carbon River Road, or any of a dozen trails in the park would remind any visitor of the serious damage that still remains. Trail crews and volunteers are hard at work rebuilding major sections of the Wonderland Trail below Cougar Rock, in Stevens Canyon, and both east and south from Carbon River. The Glacier Basin and East Side Trails remain heavily damaged despite more than a month of work.

Our calendar remains full of vital projects that need help from volunteers. The same thing is true at Olympic and North Cascades National Parks, Mount St. Helens, and on all of our local National Forests. It's important to keep the momentum going, so that as much repair can be done as possible before the next winter's storms move in, starting just a few short months from now.

And so, thank you to all of the great volunteers who have helped so far. (I've posted several dozen new pictures on our photo page of flood recovery volunteers in action--high quality, suitable for publication--so check them out!) A big thanks especially to those volunteers who keep coming back. Jean Millan, you're awesome--eight volunteer projects so far this summer, and counting! Mary Jane Wiley, you and your garden club are such an inspiration to our interpreters at the Jackson Visitor Center, who all want to grow up to be just like you and spend their retirement years roving the meadows at Paradise! Jack Leicester, I heard from someone yesterday who'd seen you on the trail at Sunrise, and was inspired by your dedication to give me a call and offer to volunteer. Flash Parlini, I know you're out there at Carbon River, helping visitors almost every week on the trails, in your quiet and unassuming way. John Titland, your Mount Rainier Associates group has been such a help to our trail crews this year, and Washington Trails Associates, the same goes for you too! And, of course, to our Student Conservation Association volunteers, including our dedicated Rainier Recovery Corps, you are truly amazing. You're breaking new ground, both literally and figuratively, for our volunteer program, and giving more and more people all the time a chance to have a great experience participating in making Mount Rainier a great National Park.

There are others too, of course, but if I listed everyone, it would be too long to read! I even saw a "Flat Stanley" here at Longmire today, and I'm sure I saw him pick up a rake and do a little trail maintenance as he hiked the Trail of the Shadows... Next time one shows up, I'm going to try to get a photograph for the blog. There's plenty of room for you out there, too, and we have lots of new projects on our calendar, including some family-oriented projects restoring the historic Longmire Campground, which we hope to turn into a great place for volunteers to camp while they're here serving in the park.

Plan now for the stories you'll be telling your grandkids: that you were here when it all happened!

The Voice of a Volunteer

I have been visiting Mount Rainier since I moved to Washington in 1983 and have spent many enjoyable days hiking the wonderful trails throughout the park. I consider Mount Rainier like a second home. Then the floods came and the winds blew....

Read more by Rainier Recovery Volunteer Jean Millan on SCA's Rainier News Blog!

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!

Backcountry Bridge Building

This past week, we embarked on our first multi-day, backcountry trail work project. For five straight days last week there was a group of four corps member and one volunteer fixing up the Huckleberry creek trail on the north side of the park, returning after work each evening to their cozy base camp 2 miles away from any trailhead. Program Director Jill Baum and I went out to help them for a day and a half. It was my first experience backcountry camping.

Read more by SCA intern Susan Newman on SCA's Rainier News Blog!

Volunteers Venture into the Backcountry

Mount Rainier Recovery Corps members recently completed the first of many 5-day, backcountry trail restoration projects planned this season. Living and working deep in the forest along the Huckleberry Creek Trail...

Read more by intern Susan Newman on SCA's Rainier News Blog!

The View from the Breakfast Table

The place we call home is a historic campsite. The campground is nestled in behind the Longmire Community Building - across the Nisqually River from the rest of Longmire - and unseen by most visitors...

Read more by Susan Newman on the Student Conservation Association's Rainier News Blog!

Field Notes

Things are hopping at Mount Rainier National Park! Summer is now officially here (the five inches of fresh snow at Sunrise on Monday notwithstanding), and every day exciting things are happening.

On Thursday last week, I traveled up to Seattle to attend the Student Conservation Association's 50th Anniversary Celebration. I got to meet the founder of SCA, who is still vivacious, energetic, and an exceptional speaker; and our superintendent, Dave Uberuaga, received an environmental leadership award. On Friday, SCA's Board of Directors visited the park, toured the Recovery Corps encampment in the Longmire Campground, and then joined us for a few hours of hard work on the Wonderland Trail reroute near Cougar Rock Campground. It's great to see the leadership of a group like SCA roll up their sleeves and pitch in on the front lines. (For a first-hand perspective, check out Kevin Hamilton's entry for June 23rd on SCA's blog.)

We're proud to be part of SCA's 50th anniversary, and pleased to have this unique partnership with them as we continue our flood recovery efforts. SCA's contribution is valued at nearly $700,000, and they have committed to raising hundreds of thousands in additional funds to support our programs as well.

Meanwhile, we were busy with several volunteer projects over the weekend, including Meadow Rover training at Paradise and Sunrise, which brought in a total of 49 volunteers between the two locations--good news for those fragile environments. Next week will be just as busy, with the first of our week-long wilderness trail projects and some family-oriented projects, among others. The Mount Rainier Recovery Corps will be working on four simultaneous projects on the 4th of July!

And let's not forget the dedicated corps of volunteers who were already part of our team before "Recovery" became one of our priorities. You'll see volunteers all over the park, working alongside our uniformed rangers, in the visitor centers and on the trails, helping to protect the park and serve its visitors, and having the time of their lives.

To all of you, thank you. And to SCA, Happy Birthday!

Field Notes

SCA Flood Recovery Corps members Chas Robles and Hannah O'Connell confer with a Park Service ranger during the Eagle Peak Search and Rescue operation.

Mount Rainier's summer volunteer program is now up and running smoothly. We've accomplished many projects, and have many more coming up on our calendar of activities, which is posted on the SCA website. This weekend we'll be working on trail projects, and campground maintenance, and training meadow rovers at both Paradise and Sunrise. We're also gearing up for some exciting family projects in the beginning of July, and our first 5-day backcountry projects as well. Personally, that sounds like a lot more fun, to me, than working in my own office, answering phone calls and e-mails. What a blog entry that would be! If anyone is interested in writing such an entry, based on your own experience working for our trail crew in the backcountry, please give me a call or send me an e-mail. I'd love to feature a "field correspondent!"

I'm writing this particular entry, though, for a much more serious purpose: to express my heartfelt thanks to the Student Conservation Association's Flood Recovery Corps, who are helping us out this summer by coordinating and leading all these wonderful volunteer projects. As many of you know from watching the local news, we had a major search-and-rescue operation in our park on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, looking for a hiker who went missing on Eagle Peak during a dayhike on Saturday. The Flood Recovery Corps freed up nine of its members to help with the search on Monday, and another six on Tuesday, despite the many other projects they're immersed in already.

It may seem like a minor thing, or even a distraction from the primary goal of our flood recovery program. But in the National Park Service, we take these emergencies very seriously--at least as seriously as we took the flood itself last winter. Every lost hiker has a wife, a son, a mother, a sister for whom this is a earth-moving event. We respond just as a fire department or police department would--we drop everything and focus all our energy on bringing the lost soul home to his family.

This incident, unfortunately, ended tragically with the discovery of the hiker's body at the base of a cliff on Tuesday afternoon. It's heartbreaking when a search ends that way. But over the course of the search, all of its participants conducted themselves with true heroism. (I, myself, served as the park's public information officer; I got to have my face on the TV news, but truly feel that I had the easy job compared to those who were out climbing through the forest.)

I am as proud as I can possibly be to work with these National Park Service heroes, and to count the Student Conservation Association's Flood Recovery Corps among them.

National Trails Day

We had volunteers all over the park today for National Trails Day. I spent the afternoon checking out two different projects near Longmire. I am continually stunned by the extent of the damage caused by last November’s floods—on the Wonderland Trail sections we were working on today, a full 2,000 meters of trail was affected, with trees down, chunks of trail missing, and long stretches ruined by water erosion.

I am also continually amazed at the energy of our volunteers, and their willingness to jump in, learn new skills (tread repair, using a crosscut saw), and get the job done. In one spot, in the space of three hours, half a dozen volunteers (out of a larger group four times that size) transformed a rough cut through the forest into something strongly resembling a National Park Service quality trail. In addition, the remains of the old trail were covered with brush, and many of the forest plants growing in the new trail corridor had been carefully transplanted. The finish project looks amazing.

Our SCA-led Flood Recovery Corps had three projects going today, while our partners with the Washington Trails Association led others. Meanwhile, Carl Fabiani, Mount Rainier’s trails foreman, was in Stevens Canyon, evaluating the options for another section of the Wonderland Trail that needs to be rebuilt, either with a long reroute or a shorter but more difficult reconstruction along a steep hillside. The amount of work that remains to be done parkwide is sobering. But the energy that I see on the trail, brought by our volunteers, gives me a lot of hope that we’ll make good progress this summer.

Speaking of which, there are several new positions posted on our long-term volunteer opportunities page, from managing cultural landscapes to developing computer databases. I’ll be posting a few more shortly, including ongoing opportunities to help with soundscape monitoring and breeding toad surveys. Exciting stuff. We’re looking for people who want to help out a day or two per week, or a few times per month. If you know of such individuals, spread the word and send them our way!

Whatever you’re able to contribute, from one day per summer to one day per week, we’re grateful for your help. If you hike the Wonderland Trail from Longmire to Carter Falls any time soon, you’ll be grateful, too.

Restoring Longmire Campground

Today’s volunteer project took place in the historic Longmire Campground, once a center of activity for visitors to Mount Rainier from the 1930s through the 1960s. It was one of those miraculous Washington days that start out cloudy with a chance of rain, but end up sunny and warm. Our goal: prepare the historic Longmire Campground for residence by our summer SCA flood recovery corps, and begin what promises to be a long process to restore the campground to its former glory. Someday the site will be used by school groups, volunteer crews, and picnickers, along with the scattering of park employees who live there now. Before that can happen, the old rock-lined paths, rock-and-mortar water spigots, and picnic tables must be excavated from the ubiquitous layer of moss and duff that has buried everything over the years.

Today’s crew of 5 volunteers and 8 SCA corps members dug into the challenge with enthusiasm, raking trails and campsites, spreading gravel, cutting and moving logs to clear paths, and constructing platforms for the SCA crew’s wall tents. To preserve the historic character of the campground, all of the work was done by hand—no chainsaws or tractors, just crosscut saws and wheelbarrows and carefully positioning rocks and logs to minimize the effects of our presence. The team took this low-impact mandate seriously. About 1:30, a group of ATVers snuck in through the back gate of the park and, surprised to find people working in the campground, cut deep ruts into the moss as they beat a hasty retreat. By 4:00 when the day’s work was done, the ruts had been carefully smoothed over, the winter’s windfall had been raked away, and the site looked better than it had before the interlopers arrived.

The rest of our SCA Recovery Corps arrives on June 1st, just in time to help out with the biggest public volunteer project day of the year so far, National Trails Day on June 2nd. In the meantime, we have a major greenhouse expansion to prepare for, and snow-covered trails to mark at Paradise. On Thursday, we’re working with a group from Evergreen State College to shovel out facilities at Sunrise in preparation for the summer. We have more greenhouse, trail repair, exotic plant removal, wilderness restoration, and roadside assistance projects in the final stages of planning.

But first, we’ll be back in the Longmire Campground again tomorrow, chipping away at a project that will build a personal connection between the volunteers of today and the visitors and park rangers of the 1930s. In a year or two, people will be able to visit and say, "my grandparents camped here fifty years ago." Fifty years from now, their grandchildren will say, "my grandparents helped make it possible again."