2012-Cairn October 2012: MPEC

Start Date-End Date: 10/13/2012-10/14/2012 Land Manager Office: Mountain Park Environmental Center Land Manager Contact: Funding Partner: Programmatic Partner: Summary: VOC is happy to have you as a member of our Cairn Program. Cairns are piles of rocks placed by people on trails to indicate the direction of the path to hikers and mark the mountain summit. Cairns show people the way as they travel in the outdoors. For us, Cairn will show you the way to get outside; learn about Colorado's environmental issues; and help take care, or steward, our public lands. Today, our group begins our year long adventure with the goal of leading our own environmental volunteer project in April 2013. This month we are partnering with the Mountain Park Environmental Center in Beulah, CO. Pueblo Mountain Park is located in the Wet Mountains of Colorado's southern foothills and borders the San Isabel National Forest. Bears, Mountain lions, deer and numerous bird species call this rugged area home. The park was designed by the conservationist Arthur Carhart, who, in 1919, first imagined our National Forests as a place for recreation and education. Pueblo Mountain Park was a part of Carhart's vision, and the Mountain Park Environmental Center (MPEC), a non-profit environmental education center founded in 2000, is taking Carhart's vision into the 21st Century. The park's extensive trail system, an important resource for MPEC's award-winning environmental education programs, was built in the 1930s and suffers from decades of erosion. VOC restored some of the park's most popular trail, Tower Trail, in order to provide safe access to MPEC's outdoor classroom. Cairn is doing to continue to help make the Tower Trail even more sustainable, by closing particular sections, maintaining others, and constructing new routes to help prevent further erosion. The Tower Trail is 1.3 miles long, but we will be focusing on the lower half of the trail. The bottom part of the trail is getting deep ruts and the rest of the trail needs to have drainage restored. A small, approximately 400ft reroute will be built at the bottom of the trail to replace a steep, unsustainable section. Description: 30 Cairn students and Mentors traveled 2.5 hours to the Mountain Park Environmental Center in Beulah Colorado October 13-14. Students and mentors spent their days on the trail, doing a 300 foot closure and re-route of one of the Center's eroding trails - the Tower Trail. Working efficiently and with very high quality, the students had the opportunity to help maintain the rest of the Tower Trail by installing drainage structures to help keep the existing in the best possible quality. Mountain Park Environmental Center donated food (for example, Sunday they enjoyed hot pancakes with hot apple topping, eggs and bacon), staff time (their chefs and site manager), and dorm rooms for students/mentors to take advantage of during their hard days on the trail. Without their support, this project would have not been so successful. The evening was spent by the camp fire with a drum circle, games, and getting to know one another a little better. Latitude/Longitude: 38.047609, -105.006058 Additional Information: Camping Available: Yes Physical Difficulty: Moderate High Altitude Project: No Desired Number of Volunteers: 45 Total Adult Volunteers Attended: 14 Total Youth Volunteers Attended: 40 Total Volunteer Days: 54 Total Unique Volunteers: 27 Total Volunteer Hours: 513 Staff Hours: 68 Stipend Hours: 0 Project Summary: Successes and Challenges: Lessons Learned: Special Notes: Stewardship Education: Water impacts on trail; trail usage. Key Concerns or Comments from Staff or Volunteers: E-mail from Director Dave Van Manen: Emily, Paul, Brandon and all the Cairn Youth, Thank YOU for all your hard work and for making the Tower Trail a better trail. The new trail looks terrific and I've already received some good feedback after only a couple of days since the work was completed. I am so pleased to hear that you all had a good experience at MPEC - it was truly a pleasure having you here. We have lots of trails and other potential projects, so if you are looking for a future Cairn Youth Program project in this part of the state, please consider MPEC. Thank you all again, and have a great rest of 2012, Dave Van Manen MPEC Director Email from Paul Mead - TA: Hi Emily, Thank you very much for the kind words. It definitely was a pleasure to get to work with you and the Cairn group. It is so nice to work with kids who actually want to be on a project instead of grudgingly showing up so that they can earn their community service credits. I have to say that I am sorry that I took off Saturday afternoon and didn't get more time to relax and chat with you. I think you are a great lady and are fun to be around. Best wishes, Paul Description of Accidents/Incidents: None Description of Work Completed: 30 Cairn students and Mentors traveled 2.5 hours to the Mountain Park Environmental Center in Beulah Colorado October 13-14. Students and mentors spent their days on the trail, doing a 300 foot closure and re-route of one of the Center's eroding trails - the Tower Trail. Working efficiently and with very high quality, the students had the opportunity to help maintain the rest of the Tower Trail by installing drainage structures to help keep the existing in the best possible quality. Mountain Park Environmental Center donated food (for example, Sunday they enjoyed hot pancakes with hot apple topping, eggs and bacon), staff time (their chefs and site manager), and dorm rooms for students/mentors to take advantage of during their hard days on the trail. Without their support, this project would have not been so successful. The evening was spent by the camp fire with a drum circle, games, and getting to know one another a little better.