2019-5-Day Backcountry: Island Lakes Trail Restoration @ Flat Tops Wilderness

Start Date-End Date: 07/22/2019-07/26/2019 Land Manager Office: USFS - Blanco Ranger District Land Manager Contact: Aaron Grimes Funding Partner: Programmatic Partner: Summary: *DEPOSIT REQUIRED* Explore and restore one of Colorado's largest Wilderness areas. Description: Where You'll Be: Located in Northwest Colorado and home to approximately 110 lakes and ponds, the Flat Tops Wilderness is known as the "Cradle of Wilderness" for seminal role in the passage of the Wilderness Act. Precisely 100 years ago, U.S. Forest Service employee Arthur Carhart was sent to survey plans for summer cabins at Trappers Lake. Instead, he became convinced that the area should be preserved,becoming one of the first USFS officials to advocate for the type of preservation that would later become known as Wilderness Areas. The Flat Tops was designated as a "Primitive Area" in 1932, pre-dating the official passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964 by 32 years. The Flat Tops now spans more than 235,000 acres and two National Forests and features 160 miles of trails. What You'll Do: You're invited to spend five days enjoying - and restoring - one of Colorado's most unique and iconic landscapes. With a group of no more than 15 people, you'll hike 10 miles with 2,000 ft. elevation gain to your backcountry basecamp and spend the days installing signs, restoring campgrounds, rerouting trail, and performing tread and corridor maintenance along the Island Lakes Trail. Car camping will be available at Trappers Lake for those who arrive the day before the hike-in, and meals will be provided by a talented backcountry Crew Chef. Pack string support will be provided for camp gear and tools, but volunteers should be prepared to carry their own personal gear (including camping gear, clothes, toiletries, water, etc.) and may be asked to help carry in food. PLEASE NOTE: Due to the 15-person limit in Wilderness areas and the duration of this project, even one late cancellation can be detrimental to our volunteer recruitment and outdoor stewardship efforts. As such, a deposit of $80 is required to register. This deposit will be refunded in full upon completion of the project, or upon cancellation more than two weeks prior to the project. Deposits will not be refunded if you cancel less than two weeks before the project. If the deposit causes an undue financial hardship, please contact Emily Schaefer at 303-715-1010 ext. 116. Why It Matters: The remote vastness of the Flat Tops Wilderness and limited staffing of the Blanco Ranger District create significant challenges in keeping up with maintenance needs. Your participation will be a tremendous help to the Forest Service in keeping the trail in working order and protecting the surrounding Wilderness. Need-to-Know Details: Minors under 18 must be accompanied by an adult 21 years or older on overnight projects. All days are requireddue to the remote location of the project. Volunteers are responsible for providing their own camping equipment.VOC will provide meals, tools, and work gloves. Cancellation:Our partners rely on VOC volunteers to accomplish critical stewardship needs, and our projects often have wait lists. If you need to cancel, pleasecontact Emily Schaeferat 303-715-1010 ext. 116 as soon as possible so we can free your spot for another volunteer and have a full workforce. About Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) is the state's oldest, largest, and leading outdoor stewardship nonprofit organization. Founded in 1984 to motivate and enable people to become active stewards of Colorado's natural resources, VOC has engaged nearly 120,000 people in more than 1,000 volunteer projects for a donated labor value of $24 million. Through award-winning youth and volunteer programs, leadership training, capacity-building programs, and collaborative efforts with nonprofits and land management agencies, VOC is an invaluable resource in Colorado, especially as our outdoor stewardship needs are approaching near-crisis levels. For more information, visit www.voc.org or call 303-715-1010. Latitude/Longitude: 39.993750, -107.242130 Additional Information: Camping Available: Yes Physical Difficulty: Difficult High Altitude Project: Yes Desired Number of Volunteers: 12 Total Adult Volunteers Attended: 55 Total Youth Volunteers Attended: 0 Total Volunteer Days: 55 Total Unique Volunteers: 11 Total Volunteer Hours: 521 Staff Hours: 71 Stipend Hours: 0 Project Summary: Eleven dedicated volunteers along with one VOC staff and one Forest Service Ranger hiked 5.5 miles into the Flat Tops Wilderness to perform critical backcountry trail maintenance on the Island Lakes Trail, a beautiful section many backpackers connect with the Chinese Wall and Carhart Trails in order to make a loop. Volunteers camped at Parvin Lake--about three miles short of the original plan to camp in the Island Lakes Basin. A snow cornice prevented the pack string from taking gear all the way in, but Parvin ended up being a great alternative. Work days consisted mainly of corridor clearing and brushing, with some tread and rock work. Over the course of three full work days, we were able to brush 2,778 feet of trail, install 13 rock steps, construct 7 new drainage structures, and clear 18 additional existing drainages. In the evenings, volunteers enjoyed card and party games around the campfire. Crew Chef Tim Zvada treated everyone to great dinners and his famous pineapple upside down cake, baked over the fire in a Dutch oven. For those who were interested in an extra hike, Aaron Grimes, our Forest Service contact, guided people who were interested to some unnamed lakes just above our base camp to fish after work as well. Successes and Challenges: Successes Aaron was really thrilled and impressed with how hard the volunteers were willing to work. He repeated several times that the work we were doing would never have been done--the rangers simply don't have enough time to get that far back most of the time, and the designated trail crew had so many other priorities on their plates that they weren't going to make it to the section we worked on. Sunsets over Parvin Lake, and great games around the fire. A lot of good crew bonding Ample food! Even with afternoon thunderstorms, the weather was amazing. Cool in the evenings, and sunny during the day but never too hot. Challenges We only had one crew leader and she was unfortunately difficult to work with. Volunteers came to me saying she was taking tools out of their hands and doing the work herself. I tried to address the issue early by encouraging her to delegate more tasks and make sure to involve her whole crew, but each time I checked in on her she had earbuds in and was working on a task while the rest of her crew stood by, unsure of how to help. I ended up working with her crew all of day 3 just to keep an eye on her and diffuse any tension. Tools were limited. Since it was too far for a site visit, we relied on the Forest Service to determine what tools would be packed. They ended up bringing almost all loppers and just a couple of pick-mattocks and some shovels. Aaron had packed assuming volunteers would want to take it easy, and while he was impressed and excited to realize people were interested in rock work and more strenuous activity, it was too late to get the tools we needed in order to do that kind of work well. Could have used rock bars, austins, dirt bags, and a couple of single jacks. Very buggy! Lessons Learned: If we do another project out here, it would still be worth having the Forest Service provide the tools or at the very least a list of the tools VOC should pack since it's really too far from Denver for a site visit to make sense. Just be sure to communicate that our volunteers are generally quite experienced and come out with the expectation that they're going to work hard! Lopping for three days in a row isn't really what they're looking for. Also, for these backcountry projects, it's important to beveryspecific with the packing list. It's not enough to just say "bring layers" or "work clothes." Need to line out that people need a rain jacket, rain pants, quick-dry synthetic base layers, long pants, work boots, water-crossing/camp shoes, etc. May want to generate a backcountry-specific checklist to include in project communications in the future. One volunteer only packed a single cotton t-shirt and no rain gear. List on the website that volunteers have to arrive the night before the project begins! Or list the project dates as Sunday to Friday, instead of Monday to Friday. It didn't end up being a big deal, but we used two different outfitters--one to pack in, and one to pack out--and I personally wouldn't do that again. There are just too many opportunities for miscommunication, especially considering there's no cell service once you leave Meeker. We weren't able to check in with the second outfitter before hiking in, and I was really nervous he wouldn't show up at the designated time to pack us out. There was also no way to guarantee the first outfitter would remember to communicate that our campsite had changed. Again, it all worked out fine, but it could have been a huge headache. Special Notes: Stewardship Education: Key Concerns or Comments from Staff or Volunteers: Description of Accidents/Incidents: None Description of Work Completed: