Many of our Volunteers take advantage of the privilege of staying in the historic Longmire Campground while they're working on projects in the Park. Some come in motorhomes and campers. Others "rough it" in tents for a weekend or a week, depending on their assignments, but every winter brings down a new carpet of limbs, twigs and fir needles which need to be cleaned up before the campground officially opens.
For the last six years, members of Geocaching.com have contributed their efforts in tidying up for the June opening, and various other groups have pitched in later in the year, creating piles which now need to be consolidated for removal by maintenance crews. In addition, there is last winter's shed of branches to gather and rake up, and the platform tents need to be erected. Lots of work for many hands!
We're asking you to help! The date is June 8. The time is 9 AM. There will be a break for bring-your-own lunch, fun and games after the event, and of course there's the opportunity to socialize with your friends. Bring your own gloves, and keep an eye on the weather report to determine appropriate clothing. Please join us. RSVP to Kevin_Bacher@nps.gov or to Crow at Petrina_Vecchio@partner.nps.gov.
And just a reminder: we still need Volunteers to help clean up winter's deposits in the Longmire housing area on Tuesday, May 28. Event begins at 9 AM. RSVP to Crow if you'd like to participate.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Longmire Campground Cleanup Event
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
New volunteer calendar
As you may have noticed, the calendar embedded at the bottom of this blog no longer shows any information. You may have noticed other things that have gone awry and uncorrected -- outdated information and obsolete links, for example (though the majority of information is indeed accurate).
The reason for these inaccuracies is that the National Park Service recently converted its e-mail system to Google, and in the process, any existing Google applications (blogger and calendar, for example) that had been managed using an NPS e-mail address became inaccessible, and anything for which that e-mail address provided the only administrative access became un-editable. This is a valuable lesson: Make sure every application has at least two administrator accounts, ideally based on different sources! In retrospect, I should have given administrative priviledges to my personal e-mail address in addition to my government one. If I had, I would still have administrative access. Alas, I didn't, and I don't... so for now, the original Google calendar, and the layout and settings for this blog, are inaccessible.
We are working to fix this problem, and I am confident that we'll get it resolved as soon as we can figure out which tech guru to ask to flip which switch.
In the meantime, I have created a new volunteer program calendar, which I will post separately, and which will be populated with all of the many volunteer events coming up this summer. There's a lot to put on your calendar, so check us out and see what you want to be sure not to miss! Check back frequently, as well, because there are many events (citizen science, backcountry maintenance, volunteer picnics, and much more) which have not yet been given specific dates. These will be identified in later blog postings and volunteer newsletters... and shared on the new volunteer calendar. Better yet, if you have Google calendar yourself, subscribe to ours and keep up to date on a daily basis.
See you out on the trails!
- Kevin Bacher, Volunteer Program Manager
Thursday, May 16, 2013
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.
National Trails Day 2013
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| A Washington Trails Association volunteer rebuilds a trail near Comet Falls in 2012 |
- If you're just looking for a day project, meet up at the Ohanapecosh Visitor Center at 8:30 a.m. on June 1. The specific project location hasn't been set yet, but it'll be somewhere nearby. For details and to sign up, visit http://vols.wta.org/web/web.pl?sm+20435+WP.
- If one day is simply not enough, consider filling one of the last two spaces available in WTA's "Volunteer Vacation," working on the Wonderland Trail near Ipsut Creek. This is a week-long project running from June 1 to June 8. You provide the sweat, WTA will provide the food and comraderie. There is an additional fee involved. For details and to sign up, visit http://vols.wta.org/web/web.pl?sm+20126+WL.
Have fun, and we'll see you out there!
Monday, May 13, 2013
MRNPA Work Party, May 18
Per John Titland, May 18th's MRNPA work party will be on the Mine Trail. This trail begins approximately 1.25 miles from the entrance on the Carbon River Hike and Bike Trail. Now that the Carbon River Road is closed to vehicle traffic, this trail is more easily accessible to visitors and could use some improvement to handle the higher foot traffic. The Mine Trail is a .26 mile trail leading to an old mine once owned by Washington Mining and Milling Co. These days the mine is closed off, but the history remains. Trail work will include maintenance to sections of a 49-foot swamp bridge and widening and smoothing the trail tread.
MRNPA volunteers will meet at the Carbon River Entrance to Mount Rainier NP at about 8:30 AM. Be ready to move out by 9:00. Park inside the gate, and please don't block the parking spaces available to the public. Be prepared for a hike the 1.25 miles to the work site. Bring your lunch and plenty of fluids to drink, work gloves and safety glasses and a full set of rain gear. During May, it is common to have rain or wet snow falling at Mount Rainier, so bring warm clothing too.
There are safety equipment requirements for all MRNPA trail work volunteers. Anyone using an aggressive tool (Pulaski, ax, shovel, etc.) or anyone working near someone using them is required to wear a hard hat and safety glasses. People working with or near a less aggressive tools are not required to wear a hard hat, but are encouraged to do so. Please bring your own hard hat if you have one. If you do not have a hard hat, MRNPA and the NPS have hard hats you may use for the day.
Wearing safety glasses is encouraged at all times. Not all safety glasses are comfortable for everyone and some will not fit over eye glasses. Because of cleanliness issues, some people don’t like wearing safety glasses that have been worn by other people. For these reasons and others, please provide yourself with a pair of personal safety glasses for your own use. A serviceable pair or safety glasses will cost about $10, and are available at hardware stores and other sources. Be advised that shatterproof eye glasses do not meet the requirement for safety glasses. Safety glasses all have side protection which eyeglasses do not.
If you plan to attend and have not yet contacted John Titland, please
drop him a note at volunteer@mrnpa.org to indicate that you are coming
and tell him how many volunteers you are bringing with you.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Wanted: Longmire Volunteer Campground Manager
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| Boy Scout volunteers hard at work cleaning up storm debris in the Longmire Volunteer Campground |
Specifically, we're looking for someone to live in our volunteer campground in their RV and coordinate the use of 31 tent sites, 2 group places, and several platform tents. You'll be taking reservations and assigning campsites, making sure guests are aware of campground regulations and in compliance with them, and making sure everyone feels welcomed and supported. You'll deal with challenges as they come up -- illegal campers, people who've lost their keys, loose dogs, and periodic reports of gunfire echoing up the canyon from Forest Service land outside the park. You'll maintain, clean, and supply a comfort station with three showers, and assign and retrieve keys from campers. You'll make sure that campsites are kept clean and inviting for the next guest.
The Longmire Campground is a historic site dating back to the 1930s, so its spaces are small, limiting RVs, including yours, to 24 feet in length. It contains 16 sites with hookups, including yours, which are used by park staff, concession employees, and full-time volunteers. The remaining sites -- the ones you'll be coordinating -- have no hookups.
The campground was closed to public use in the late 1960s, and was resurrected in 2007 for use by volunteers, education groups, and other working park partners. Its picnic tables are begged and borrowed, and its fire grates are 50 years old. With the help of grant money from Washington's National Park Fund and Glad®, we're planning to purchase and build or install new tables and grates this summer. You'll be helping to coordinate and lead these efforts, as well as other volunteer groups that help open the campground in the spring (cleaning up storm debris and setting up platform tents) and close it down in the fall.
Like any campground host position, it's a full-time, 40-hour-a-week job, with flexible hours, since you'll need to be on call whenever volunteers arrive or need assistance. Reimbursement is available for living expenses. The season begins approximately June 1 and runs through the end of September.
If you're interested, don't delay -- fill out an application today at volunteer.gov! You can also contact me directly to express interest in the position, at 360-569-6567 or Kevin_Bacher [at] NPS.gov.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Impacts of Sequestration on Mount Rainier's Volunteer Program
Our priorities are public safety and access. As we meet these priorities with leaner resources, the volunteer program will play a critical role. Of course, volunteers are already a tremendous asset to our park. Last year 1,804 volunteers contributed 74,615 hours of volunteer time. A non-partisant research organization called Independent Sector publishes an annual estimate of the financial value of volunteer service, based on what it would cost to hire paid labor (with salary and benefits) to do comparable work. At this year's rate of $22.14 per hour, Mount Rainier's volunteers contribute $1.65 million worth of productivity. Looked at another way, a typical 3-month summer seasonal employee works for about 500 hours, so our volunteers are the equivalent of hiring 149 additional seasonal workers. Obviously, even without sequestration, we could never hope to accomplish as much, nor serve our public as well, without their help.
And our numbers keep growing. I've worked here for more than ten years now, and our volunteer numbers have been larger every year except 2008, and that was only because of the immense surge of volunteers who responded to winter storm damage during the previous summer. Volunteer hours are up almost 80% over the last decade, and volunteers are being used in creative ways to help with citizen science, backcountry maintenance, and almost every other part of park operations.
I've been asked many times over the past few months how sequestration will affect Mount Rainier's volunteer program. Here are three examples:
- Closed facilities mean fewer volunteers. The Ohanapecosh Visitor Center will not open this summer. The Cougar Rock Campground will have a shorter season. In both cases, volunteer jobs have been suspended or reduced along with those of paid employees. There will be no volunteer interpreters or Junior Ranger program assistants at Ohanapecosh, and Cougar Rock's campground hosts will come on duty later in the year.
- Supervisory capacity is reduced. One of the most significant barriers to volunteer program growth has always been "span of supervision." Volunteers, just like paid employees, must be trained, mentored, supervised, and provided with the supplies and equipment they need to do their jobs safely and effectively. Thus, there is a limit to the number of volunteers a supervisor can work with. Under sequestration, many vacant positions at Mount Rainier have gone unfilled, leaving remaining staff with more work to accomplish with fewer people, and in many cases, even less time to work with volunteers. We've found creative ways to overcome this problem over the years--for example, hiring interns through the Student Conservation Association (SCA) specifically to coordinate volunteers in the Citizen Science and Trails programs; and working in partnership with the Washington Trails Association to coordinate volunteer projects. And many supervisors are finding that if they assign their front-line employees to work with volunteers, they can get even more accomplished than they can without their help (and because those volunteers require training and supervision, the front-line employee's own job is in no danger of being "replaced" by them).
- Less money is available to support the volunteer program. Contrary to popular believe, volunteers are not "free" (though they provide an exceptional return on investment). There are costs associated with training, supervision, supplies, uniforms, fleet vehicles, housing, and sometimes a small per diem to cover living expenses for long-term volunteers. Volunteer program support comes from four places. My own salary, as the park's Volunteer and Outreach Program Manager, is supported by the park's "base" funding. We receive a small additional budget (usually $15-$18,000 annually) distributed out of a nationwide appropriation for the Park Service's volunteer programs. A significant amount of volunteer support comes from the individual programs in which volunteers work--for example, our Visitor Protection program may pay for a fleet vehicle to support our Emergency Roadside Assistance volunteers, or our division of Interpretation and Education may pay for housing and utilities on behalf of a volunteer working full-time in one of the park's visitor centers. All three of these funding sources are affected by sequestration and other budget cuts. With less money to support volunteers, our capacity to work with them is reduced.
Fortunately, our fourth funding source, grants and donations, has so far made up a lot of the difference. A Youth Partnerships Program grant, for example, will support three SCA Community Crews made up of high school age youth from Seattle this summer, as well as youth internships in our education and restoration programs. An "America's Best Idea" grant from the National Park Foundation will expand that program further and support hiring almost a dozen youth from Joint Base Lewis-McChord to join the Community Crews. Donations from Washington's National Park Fund (WNPF) and "Keep America Beautiful," a program supported by Glad®, will fund much-needed upgrades to the volunteer campground at Longmire. And through an incredibly generous estate gift from the Raymond and Eleanor Wilson Charitable Trust, we're in the third year of a five-year, $50,000-per-year commitment by WNPF. This year's installment will pay for housing, reimbursements, uniforms, vehicles, and supplies for volunteer interpreters, educators, emergency roadside assistants, campground hosts, citizen scientists, restoration and trail crews, geologists, wilderness patrol, nordic patrol, and climbing rangers. We are incredibly grateful for the generosity of those who support these programs through their donations.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Reminder: Volunteer Brunch this Saturday!
In case you don't yet have it on your calendar, this is just a reminder that the annual Volunteer Brunch is coming up this Saturday, May 11, from 9 to 11 am at the newly remodeled Tacoma Mountaineers' Program Center. This event is for both returning volunteers and those who are interested in learning more about the park and its volunteer program. Get reacquainted with old friends after the long winter, and learn about all the new things going on up on The Mountain this year! Bring your favorite potluck dish to share. Beverages and place settings will be furnished by the hosts. The address is 2302 North 30th St. Tacoma WA 98403. See you there!
Didn't We Just Do That?
Yes, you did! But litter is an ongoing problem, and we want to have our gateway to the Mountain looking nice for our Fourth of July visitors. Mount Rainier's wonderful Volunteers have adopted the two-mile stretch of SR 706 which includes our Tahoma Woods property, and we'll be conducting another litter patrol as part of our partnership with the state Dept. of Transportation's Adopt-a-Highway program. They limit us to twelve participants, so if you're interested, sign up soon! Gloves, safety vests, bags and "long-armed grabbers" will be provided. Hard hats are optional, so if you want to wear one, bring your own.
Volunteers for this project MUST watch the DoT's five-minute training video featuring goofy (and much younger) Bill Nye the Science Guy. By the way, our Volunteers are featured on the front page of the Adopt-a-Highway site this month!
Contact Crow at Petrina_Vecchio@partner.nps.gov to reserve your spot. We will be staging at Tahoma Woods in the Administration Building parking lot at 9 AM on Saturday, June 29.
