2022-Adobe SWAT @ Boulder Open Space

Start Date-End Date: 09/09/2022-09/09/2022 Land Manager Office: City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks Land Manager Contact: Beau Clark Funding Partner: Programmatic Partner: Summary: Join your colleagues at Adobe and VOC in Boulder Open Space for a trail construction or maintenance project Description: Boulder Open Space Latitude/Longitude: 40.0247794, -105.2271559 Additional Information: Camping Available: No Physical Difficulty: Easy, Moderate High Altitude Project: No Desired Number of Volunteers: 30 Total Adult Volunteers Attended: 31 Total Youth Volunteers Attended: 0 Total Volunteer Days: 31 Total Unique Volunteers: 31 Total Volunteer Hours: 220 Staff Hours: 19 Stipend Hours: 0 Project Summary: Great project! We met near the Ranger Cottage in Chautauqua park. Weather worked out extremely well for us - despite 90+ degrees all week it dropped to 70s for our project day. Parking was a little difficult for some of the late arrivals because the park was really popular that day. Most volunteers found parking near the Ranger Cottage, one guy complained about having to walk up from the street parking (an extra 100 ft walk). The project was to continue construction/final tuning on a new trail reroute in Chautauqua park. Boulder Open Space staff had been working on it all season, and most of the new trail tread has been constructed, but there were some final clean up tasks to do. Jessica Combs, the Adobe contact, wasn't able to make it to the project on the day of the event, so Tricia Wegman stepped in to help. We had 3 volunteer CLs join, and 4 staff from Boulder Open Space. The group separated into 3 crews of 8-10. One crew removed an old fence, and the other two crews spent most of the day dispersing rocks that had piled up. Boulder Open Space paid for lunch and brought it up to the trail for us (pizza). One volunteer was lost during lunch, he went down to the parking lot for some reason but was able to find us again. 2 crews ended about 30 minutes early after an exhausting day dispersing rocks. The fence crew removed the old fence very quickly and were able to construct 3 new sections of fence. Everyone was back down at their cars by 3:30pm. Successes and Challenges: Successes: Great CLs and good energy from the Adobe crew. The crews that moved rocks all day were innovative - immediately formed a fire line to pass rocks from the piles to dispersal which made the work a lot easier and more team-based The fence crew worked quickly - removed the old fence by 11am, and were started on installing new posts before lunch. All seemed to have great spirits about the tasks Challenges: (the project went well, this is all nit picky stuff) Unpredictable number of volunteers. Jessica told the Project Manager the week of the event that there would be 43 people, but only 28 showed up. Lunch started/arrived late. We started lunch around 1pm, instead of 12pm. It's unclear if that was Boulder staff picking it up late or not communicating that it was ready, or Cosmo's Pizza delivered late, but people definitely lost steam leading up to lunch a bit. I finally said let's walk over to the lunch spot (the end of the trail) and take a break, and the pizza was there waiting for us. We had about a 45 min lunch break, and then worked for 1-1.5 hours after lunch. CLs didn't give thorough safety talks and so after work started, there was a few moments where the PM had to step in to explain safety (announcing hikers coming through the work area, leaving space between each other for safe working) The rock crews didn't really get to use any of the tools all day. Some got to use the mcleod, but most just did the one task of moving rocks. This is because most of the tread was already completed by the Boulder staff, and all the remaining tasks were mostly cleaning up the work area - rocks, duff, etc. Volunteers had a hard time matching gloves/finding gloves that fit. I guess be more careful to bring 2 boxes of gloves, or this is just the natural of projects later in the season that all the gloves are in bad shape. Lessons Learned: Special Notes: Stewardship Education: Key Concerns or Comments from Staff or Volunteers: Description of Accidents/Incidents: Description of Work Completed: