HELP! Need Volunteers to Handout Annual Surveys

Calling all volunteers!  We were handed the annual surveys today to hand out on the following schedule.  We desperately need helpers especially this Sunday, July 10th!

7/10  Paradise 12:30-4:30

7/13 Sunrise    12:30 - 4:30

7/15 Ohana      12:30 - 4:30

7/17 Longmire   12:30 - 4:30

7/21 Ohana       9:00 - 1:00 

7/23 Sunrise     9:00 - 1:00

7/26 Longmire   9:00 - 1:00

7/30 Paradise    8:00 - 12:00

This survey is taken every year and helps us discover who our park visitors are and what they did while they were here.  We need one person to handle each shift, or two who would be willing to share half and half.  You will pick a single spot to stay and hand a survey to pre-selected number of visitors.  Full directions will be given to you when you arrive. 

If you are available please contact Kevin Bacher, Mark Loper, or Maureen McLean.  We truly appreciate your help.

Thank you

Maureen McLean

Coordinator MORA Meadow Rovers

Volunteer Picnics Recap

The volunteer picnics have come and gone, and we would like to extend a big THANK YOU to all who participated in these events.  We saw something falling from the sky for the Longmire Volunteer Picnic (our best guess is that it was...rain) and we were able to shift everything inside next to the roaring fire within the Community Building.  As for the Sunrise Volunteer Picnic, we were much dryer, though it was much colder, with temperatures in the mid 40's for most of the day.  We had great turn-outs at both events, and we thank all of the volunteers that could make it and those of you who could not.

 

 

 

Thank you!

First MRNPA Work Party for 2015

The first Mount Rainier National Park Associates trails work party of 2015 will be on Saturday, April 25th.  The crew will be working on the Trail of the Shadows at Longmire, building the approaches to a new boardwalk and repairing some winter flood damage.

Participants will meet in the Longmire parking lot near the museum at 8:30, and will head out by 9:00 AM. The hike to the work site is very short. Always bring a warm jacket, a full set of rain gear, your work gloves, and a lunch.

If you plan to attend this April 25th MRNPA trails work party, you are asked to register with John Titland at volunteer(at)mrnpa.org. Please let him know how many people will be in your party. Tools will be provided. Members using aggressive tools (axes, pulaskis, etc.) must wear hard hats and protective goggles. Bring your own if you have them!

Shadows of the Past - Living History

Come along on a walk through history Saturday Evening, August 23rd at Longmire!
Contact:  Park Ranger Curt Jacquot, (360) 569-6577

August 15, 2014 – On Saturday August 23rd Mount Rainier National Park will present Shadows of the Past, a “living history” program. Volunteers and staff in costumes will portray important individuals from the park’s past.  The early story of Mount Rainier and the National Park Service from 1883 through 1916 will be told. Lead Rangers will guide groups along the Trail of the Shadows in Longmire. Historical figures will emerge from the darkness while volunteers with lanterns illuminate the scenes!

The free program lasts about 80 minutes. Admission to the park is $15 for private vehicles. Longmire is six miles east of the park’s southwest Nisqually entrance.  Walks will leave (rain or shine) from in front of the National Park Inn at Longmire at 8:30 PM, 8:50 PM, 9:10 PM, and 9:30 PM.  Those attending should bring warm clothing, sturdy footwear, insect repellant, and a flashlight.

Please note: Curt still needs a few lantern carriers to help with this year's Shadows of the Past program. Four walks will leave from in front of the National Park Inn at Longmire between 8:30 PM and 9:30 PM. The walks last about 90 minutes. We need three or four carriers per walk. Those carrying a lantern spread out during the walk and then move to illuminate the speakers during stops. If you would like to assist, contact Curt at the number given above.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS: Volunteer picnics on August 16 and 17!

The summer is just flying by, and already it's nearly time to celebrate the season with our annual volunteer picnics! Like last year, we'll be gathering both at Longmire and Sunrise. This year's dates and times are as follows:

• Friday, August 16, 2013, 4:30 p.m., Longmire Community Building
• Saturday, August 17, 2013, 4:00 p.m., Sunrise Picnic Area

Both picnics are potluck, so bring a dish to share (main course, salad, or desert). We will hope to set up a portable grill at Sunrise, as we did last year, for grilling hamburgers, hot dogs, veggie burgers, or whatever else you want to bring, but that's not yet confirmed, so watch for more details.

These are great opportunities to meet other volunteers and park supervisors, to celebrate the great work that's going on throughout the park, and to catch up on what's new. All volunteers, potential volunteers, paid employees, and family members are welcome!

Longmire Housing Area Urgently Needs You!

The winter snows brought down a lot of small limbs and other debris in the Longmire employee housing area which now needs to be collected and removed from the compound. Dale Harvard has put out an urgent call for volunteers to help with the clean-up. If you are interested in participating, we'll be gathering in the housing area at 10:30 AM on Tuesday May 28th. Bring gloves if you have them, and of course be prepared for any kind of weather. The project is expected to take no more than four hours. Please RSVP to Crow at petrina_vecchio@partner.nps.gov by May 23.

Westside Volunteer Picnic

Today, westside Volunteers gathered at the Longmire Community Building for the annual mid-season picnic. Kevin Bacher's Power Point presentation showcased our wonderful volunteers and volunteer projects in all corners of the Park, and was received with great applause. A second picnic for eastside Volunteers is slated for next Saturday at the Sunrise picnic area from 4-6 PM. If you missed this one or want to attend another get-together, we hope to see you there!

By popular request, we now present the instructions for creating Crow's "Picnic Chicks."

You will need: 

Eggs

Carrots

Mayonnaise

Mustard

Horseradish

Nonpareil (small) capers

Salt

Begin by hard-boiling as many eggs as you expect to need, plus a few extras because you will need additional yolks. Chill the eggs thoroughly before shelling. While the eggs are cooling, prepare the feet by cutting bird-foot shapes from slices of carrot. If you're dextrous, you might be able to score a carrot first and then cut the slices, but that was beyond my culinary skill. The feet should have three front toes and one back toe for inserting into the egg. Also prepare small beak-shaped (triangular) pieces of carrot.

Peel the eggs and carefully slice off the tops so that a little of the yolk is left in the top section and the bulk of it in the body of the egg. Carefully remove the yolk from both pieces with a paring knife. Whip or mash the yolks with mayonnaise, mustard, salt and (secret ingredient!) a dab of horseradish.

Before filling, insert the back toes of the feet into the body of the egg and set it on the serving tray. You may need to level up the bottoms of the eggs so the chicks sit flat. Fill a pastry tube or cookie press with the whipped yolks and force it into the body of the egg, making a tall mound in the center. Press the cap onto the mound of yolk, tipped back so the chick's face shows. Insert two nonpareil capers into the yolk mound for eyes and finish the chick with a carrot beak. Then stand back and watch your guests chuckle!

Annual Volunteer Breakfast is next week!

If the presentation is boring, you can
step outside and enjoy the view!

From Amy Mann at the Tacoma Mountaineers:

The Tacoma Branch Hiking/Backpacking Committee invites you to join Mount Rainier National Park staff at the park's Community Building at Longmire at 10:00 a.m. on May 5, 2012 for our annual spring brunch!

This event is a great way to kick off the volunteer season for 2012. Meet old friends, make new ones, and most important, learn about everything that's going on at Mount Rainier and its volunteer program. If you've been a volunteer before, come learn what's new. If you've never volunteered, come learn about the many opportunities available for people of all ages and interests.

The annual volunteer brunch is usually sponsored by the Meadow Rover program and held at the Tacoma Mountaineers Clubhouse. However, the building is being remodeled this year, so this time we're holding the event in the park itself.

Volunteers (and potential volunteers) who attend this event will be granted free admission to the park. Please RSVP to Kevin_Bacher@nps.gov so that we can give a list of names to the rangers at the entrance station.

The brunch is "potluck," so please bring a dish to share. We'll gather at 10:00, eat at 10:30, and have a short presentation at 11:00 about park news and our plans for the upcoming super season. All are welcome! After the program, stick around to chat with the rangers and other volunteers, or spend the day in the park.

The Community Building is located across the historic suspension bridge from Longmire.

Volunteer Architects

The Longmire National Historic Landmark District posed a challenge for Professor Robert Melnick’s University of Oregon landscape architecture students in a three-day “studio” (seminar) last autumn. Students were charged with “reconfiguring the area’s circulation, viewscape, public plazas and more, all within the confines of permitted changes” as defined by the rules and regulations concerning improvements and development in such areas. Here, the students learned to strike a balance between Park values and visitor expectations, a dual mandate which is defined by resource protection and public accessibility.

As the Park moves forward, the work contributed by these student volunteers will be taken into consideration. Historical Architect Sueann Brown states, “What we do in the end may not look exactly like any one student's plan, but will probably borrow some of the best ideas from each.”

New webcam at Longmire!

At long last, our webcam at Longmire has gone live! We now have six webcams at Paradise, for goodness sake, and a summer webcam at Camp Muir, so it was high time we got one at Longmire. The camera is located in the conference room on the second floor of our administration building, just two doors down from my office, so you can now see roughly the same view I have out my office window, looking across the grounds to the Longmire Museum and the road leading up from the Nisqually Entrance, with the National Park Inn hidden behind the trees in the distance. Watch for school groups gathering at the beginning of the Trail of the Shadows. In the summer, look for shuttle buses arriving to take visitors up to Paradise. This time of year, you might see people building snowmen in front of the administration building. Enjoy the show!

The above is Longmire. Here, just for comparison, is the view from the visitor center at Paradise:

And from Camp Muir (don't expect anyone to go up and defog the camera lens until spring):



$10,000 Park Service grant supports bringing history to life at Longmire

This summer, and hopefully for years to come, history will come alive even more than usual at Mount Rainier National Park. Making it all possible is a new $10,000 grant of "special project funding" from the Park Service's national volunteer program, which will pay for additional staff time, training, volunteer reimbursements, and, of course, historical costumes.

People will see the new program in operation in two ways. Every Saturday throughout most of July and August, visitors will be treated to either an evening performance of the park's famous "Shadows of the Past" program, or to historical "vignettes" acted out at the National Park Inn, Longmire Museum, and nearby shuttle stop. Vignettes will be short, but the Shadows of the Past program is an hour-long venture through time, a 0.7 mile guided trek by lantern light to meet John Muir, James Longmire, Fay Fuller, and other characters from the park's past.

The new program will be provided almost entirely by volunteers: volunteer actors, volunteer lantern-bearers, volunteer script writers, volunteer historical researchers, and volunteer costumers. Join our company of actors and supporters! We're still recruiting people to help, so spread the word to your neighborhood community theaters and those characters at work who are always stealing the spotlight at the company barbecue. Come out, yourself, and get a front-row view of the action, even if you're working behind the scenes!

If nothing else, come see us in action. Here's a complete schedule of performances. Times and specific locations for the vignettes have yet to be determined, but Shadows of the Past programs will begin at dusk from the Transportation Exhibit at Longmire:

July 10 - Shadows of the Past
July 17 - Historical Vignette
July 24 - Shadows of the Past

July 31 - Historical Vignette
August 7 - Shadows of the Past

August 14 - Historical Vignette
August 21 - Shadows of the Past

August 28 - Historical Vignette

For more information, contact West District Interpreter Lee Snook at 360-569-6043.

Characters Welcome! (and Needed!)

Ever wish for the simpler days? Does today’s fast pace and impersonal electronic age have you down? Well, Mount Rainier National Park is looking to take a few select folks Back In Time! This summer we are expanding our living history program and we need people passionate about the park, history, and people, and who have a penchant for dressing up, to join us for some fun. We need volunteers to fill a variety of roles to bring history to life this summer for our Shadows of the Past living history programs and a variety of vignettes at Longmire. Volunteers are needed for the following:

Characters – Have a flair for the dramatic? Ever wanted to wear a fake beard and talk with a Scottish brogue? We need people to fill a variety of roles from Mount Rainier’s history, memorizing scripts and portraying characters in at least one Shadows of the Past program and one character in a roving vignette.

Guides – Do you like to answer questions and play follow the leader? Guides are needed to lead visitors through the Shadows of the Past program by memorizing a script and monitoring the group. We also need guides to introduce vignettes and answer visitor questions.

Writers – Like to write short stories? Vignettes need to be written for 15-minute programs involving three to five characters. Topics will revolve around the 1899 – 1920s history of Mount Rainier. Specific topics will be discussed and assigned to writers.

Lantern bearers – Want to be involved, but want to stay behind the scenes? Lantern bearers are needed for Shadows of the Past programs to illuminate the path for visitors and the characters during the program.

Researchers – Have a general curiosity about Mount Rainier in the late 1800s to early 1900s? Researchers are needed to create a general outline and bibliography of background information about Mount Rainier and characters from 1889 to the 1920s.

Mark your calendars! Shadows of the Past performances will be the evenings of July 10th and 24th and August 7th and 21st. Vignettes are scheduled for July 17th and 31s and August 14th and 28th during the day.

For more information on the program or any of the positions listed please contact Lee Snook at Lee_Snook@nps.gov or 360.569.2211 x 6043. You can also submit an application online at volunteer.gov/gov.