Description
Start Date-End Date: 10/14/2017-10/14/2017
Land Manager Office: City of Greeley - Parks and Recreation
Land Manager Contact: Karen Scopel
Funding Partner:
Programmatic Partner:
Summary: This project is perfect for beginners and those looking to meet people from across the state.
Description: About the Stewardship Site:
Home to Greeley's annual Firefly Night Walk, the McCloskey Natural Area preserves an open space along the Sheep Draw Trail in the middle of suburban Greeley. As part of a regional trail system connecting to the Poudre River Trail, the area is popular with walkers, hikers, bikers and nature lovers.
About the Volunteer Experience:
Volunteers ages 12 and up are needed to help construct roughly 3,000 feet of new trail - the Firefly Trail - at the McCloskey Natural Area. The work will be light-to-moderate in nature, making this project great for older youth and those new to VOC projects or outdoor experiences. Specific tasks will include establishing the trail corridor and spreading and compacting aggregate "crusher fine" material to create the trail surface. There could be up to 50 people on this project, so come on out and meet people from all over the state while working hard to care for Colorado's natural resources! Breakfast and lunch will be provided.
About the Overall Impact:
The Firefly Trail will create a new recreation opportunity in the McCloskey Natural Area, offering hikers and runners a soft surface alternative to the paved Sheep Draw Trail.
NOTE: MINORS ON VOC PROJECTS
Youth under 16 must be accompanied by an adult 21 years or older on single-day projects.
Latitude/Longitude: 40.4181, -104.794213
Additional Information:
Camping Available: No
Physical Difficulty: Easy, Moderate
High Altitude Project: No
Desired Number of Volunteers: 75
Total Adult Volunteers Attended: 40
Total Youth Volunteers Attended: 5
Total Volunteer Days: 45
Total Unique Volunteers: 45
Total Volunteer Hours: 315
Staff Hours: 21
Stipend Hours: 0
Project Summary: Working with Karen from the city of Greeley was great, she was enthusiastic about the project and happy to help prep any necessary elements on their end. Despite this partnership we still ran into some unavoidable issue in prepping for the project. The material was being donated by the gas and oil company that was restoring the area, so that was not finalized until the week prior and material would not be delivered until the last minute. This made staging all the crusher fines on the trial a last minute task, which ended up being foiled by a week of wet, cold snowy weather. The work site became so saturated that significant resource damage would have occurred if machines were used in that area. Staging the materials in the parking lot and wheel barrowing it in would also be too difficult in the mud, so we were forced to reschedule the project to the next weekend.
This definitely had an effect on our ability to get our desired number of volunteers out to the project, as we had many cancellations. I worked with Karen to make a new plan for staging, and we would stage the material in piles much closer together so the work could still be accomplished with a new goal of 50 volunteers, instead of 100. Luckily the weather the following week was sunny and allowed the area enough time to dry out so the materials could be staged on Thursday and the project was a go!
The morning of the project brought as dense food across the entire city of Greeley, and although the project team all made it to the site I did get a few calls about delays to wait out the fog. Between the reschedule and the weather we ended up with around 35 volunteers as well as 10 volunteers from the extraction company and 5 city employees. So we weren't too far off of our goal of 50 volunteers. The crusher piles were staged 15ft apart, so finishing the 3000ft of trail in that time with the groups we had was definitely doable. Even with groups working at a moderate pace we were able to get all the work finished by 2:30PM. There were some fine tuning task the city wanted to accomplished after we finished, but they needed to use the tractors to bring out additional material and this was a very slow process. At about the same time the wind really picked up, so volunteers were getting impatient waiting around in the cold, crazy wind and started dropping like flies. After about an hour I spoke with Chris from the city about wrapping up the project and having the extraction volunteers work with him to finish up the last few task because I could tell the volunteers that stuck around were feeling pretty miserable. He was fine with this and they had enough support to accomplish the last few tasks.
Successes and Challenges: Successes
Despite all the challenges, we finished all the work!
Challenges
Rescheduling a project is always difficult, lost some project team and many volunteers
Turnout was low
Not the most exciting project/site
Lessons Learned: Try and get project materials staged in advance to avoid any last minute issues
Special Notes:
Stewardship Education:
Key Concerns or Comments from Staff or Volunteers:
Description of Accidents/Incidents:
Description of Work Completed:
Details
| 12 and older |
