With Labor Day Weekend coming up, we know the end of summer is drawing near. Sigh! But it’s been another exciting season in the world of Friends of the Inyo, as you will be able to tell from these narratives submitted by our hard-working Trail Ambassadors. Please enjoy reading about what they have been up to, share with your friends and networks, and, if you see them out on the trails, please say hello to them and thank them for their work. They will still be working with us and leading hikes till the end of September! Smiles all around….
Stewardship
Read some exciting progress notes from our Trail Ambassadors, with an introduction and post-note from Stewardship Director Lindsay Butcher. It is hard to believe, but here we are- already halfway through the Trail Ambassador season! My how time zips by… Despite the multiple false starts of summer and the ongoing damage control from winter, our TAs have been up to some awesome work alongside our Forest Service partners. Here are some highlights from their last month of work. From Logan, TA on the Mt. Whitney Ranger District of the Inyo National Forest: My Favorite day this month- Overnight in the Eastern…
Pine nuts, a high-energy food, helped sustain Native peoples of the Eastern Sierra through the winter. Friends of the Inyo’s annual impact report, which we usually release at mid-year to celebrate the previous year’s accomplishments, is symbolically named thus to acknowledge the support of our donors, funders, and volunteers, whose generosity sustains our work of protecting and caring for the land and water of the Eastern Sierra.
With our typical season timeline pushed back this year, we are a bit delayed in getting our first month of the Trail Ambassador season in the books. Despite all of the roadblocks (figurative and literal) we’ve hit the ground running! We’ve asked the TAs to give us a quick summary of their first impressions. Here’s what they have to say: Logan: Mt. Whitney RD I have been working with the USFS Mt. Whitney Rangers on local trails such as Mt. Whitney, Kennedy Meadows, Kearsarge Pass, Cottonwood Lakes. Lately there has been a lot of trail reporting. With this year’s heavy snowfall,…
By Lindsay Butcher, Stewardship Director The winter of 2022-2023 has been a doozy! As of the day I’m writing this blurb in late March, we are inching closer and closer to an all-time record snowpack, just shy of the 1952 record, with more precipitation on the way! This means we’ve had to be, well…flexible, to say the least, about managing our usual season of low-elevation Stewardship Events. Starting in November with the American Alpine Club’s Bishop Craggin’ Classic: The original project site was covered in 3 inches of snow the week before. Friends of the Inyo was able to pivot at…
Death Valley National Park needs hearty citizen science volunteers to help with annual monitoring of endemic plant species at the Eureka Dunes. This is a great activity for giving back to nature during Earth Day Month! Monitoring will be strenuous, requiring climbing to the tops of tall dunes and hiking up to five miles each day. Volunteers are encouraged to commit to an entire four-day monitoring period if possible. You can choose from the following dates: April 10-13, April 17-20, or April 24-27. At least two volunteers are needed for each four-day volunteer assignment. Volunteers will camp with park staff…
By Lindsay Butcher, Stewardship Director SnowSchool is the nation’s largest on-snow winter ecology education program, with more than 30,000 annual participants at 60 sites across the United States. Developed by Winter Wildlands Alliance (WWA) to introduce underserved K-12 students to snow science and the wonder of winter landscapes, SnowSchool combines hands-on science education with snowshoe-powered outdoor exploration. The kiddos learn what the water cycle is and the part humans play in it, what our local watershed looks like and where we get our water from, where it goes, winter adaptations of animals/humans/plants, water-snow equivalency, and how to dig a snow…
Throughout the summer, the Trail Ambassadors do a variety of things: clearing water bars and sawing out downed logs on trails, obliterating illegal fire rings, chatting with visitors, picking up trash, logging all these stats, even…penning haikus! Wait, what?! You read that right. Stewardship Director Alex Ertaud asked each Trail Ambassador to collect their thoughts after each day of work, and come up with a little poetic musing in the 5-7-5 syllable style of a haiku. While they found it a bit odd at first, the TAs came to enjoy plugging into their creative sides during and after long days…
Yee-haw: It’s time for another edition of Stewardship Round-Up! Though this is our penultimate issue of this monthly dispatch, never fear and shed no tear, for we have a great re-cap for you this month. Recap compiled by Alex Ertaud, Stewardship Director for Friends of the Inyo August is always a great month for the Trail Ambassadors (TAs) to sink their teeth into some meatier projects they may have been eyeing and scouting in June and July. So, without further ado, here are some highlights of what the TAs have been up to this month: From Bradley Olson, Trail Ambassador…
Read some exciting progress notes from our Trail Ambassadors, with an introduction and post-note from Stewardship Director Alex Ertaud. “We’re thick into the Dog Days of summer, hitting the midway point of our season, and the Trail Ambassadors (TAs) just keep on rolling! Alongside our Forest Service partners, our TAs have been up to some amazing work. But don’t take my word for it: Let’s hear it from the TAs themselves! Here are some highlights from their last month of work in north-to-south order depending on the Ranger District to which each of them is assigned.” From Bradley Olson, TA…