It is with great pleasure that we present our calendar for the Summer 2019 Season of Volunteer Stewardship Events: 6/22 – 10th Annual June Lake Trails Day 6/29 – Lower Rock Creek Work Day w/ SEMBA 7/13 – Bridgeport Trails Day 7/20 – Rock Creek Lakes Clean-Up 8/7-11 – Sierra National Forest Wilderness Project ***Space Limited, RSVP Required*** 8/10 & 11 – Owens River Water Trail Work Weekend 8/24 – Rock Creek Lakes Clean-Up 9/21 – Bodie Hills Stewardship Day 9/28 – National Public Lands Day w/ Eastern Sierra 4WD Club Look for more specific details on exact times and…
Stewardship
This Spring, we have a trio of volunteer opportunities in our desert and high-desert ecosystems. Saturday, March 23, 2019 – Death Valley National Park Badwater Basin Effacement Volunteer Project – Our partners at Death Valley National Park are looking for enthusiastic volunteers for a day of restoring a playa in the Badwater Basin, treating OHV trespass. Space is limited to twelve people, so please RSVP to me at alex@friendsoftheinyo.org and I will send you the full details. Sunday, March 24, 2019 – Flash Foxy Women’s Climbing Festival Stewardship Day – Join us and partners as we send off the Women’s Climbing Festival…
The government shutdown from December 22, 2018 to January 25, 2019 was the longest in US history and its effects could be felt throughout the nation. With countless stories of its negative effects on our public lands,Friends of the Inyo couldn’t passively stand by and let that happen here in the Eastern Sierra. We organized trips to Travertine Hot Springs, Buckeye Hot Springs, Mono Lake Scenic Overlook, and Wild Willy’s Hot Springs to pick up trash and encourage others to care for these places as well. Although a simple idea, picking up trash can be a powerful tool. On the morning of…
What a year it’s been! 2018 saw our Stewardship program tally some impressive numbers: We put on over 20 different volunteer events, which allowed us to engage over 400 volunteers for a whopping 1,919 hours of volunteer work! Through those volunteer events, our Trail Ambassadors, and Stewardship Crews, we picked up over 2,000 pounds of trash from our public lands front and backcountries, monitored 518.5 miles of trails, and removed 105 logs from said trails. Numbers are great, but why tell you what we did when we can show you? Here are some photos highlighting Friends of the Inyo stewarding…
After three pleasant days floating the future Owens River Water Trail with volunteer groups this summer, we’ve opened up 3,070 feet of navigable river channel! It’s exciting to see this project take shape. Stay tuned for future opportunities to join us on the river.
What a blissful five days of restoring our treasured alpine landscape with the Sierra National Forest and funding from the National Wilderness Stewardship Alliance! Stay tuned for stories from the trip. For now, enjoy these incredible photos by volunteer Ken Miller. Thanks to our stalwart volunteers, to the Sierra National Forest staff who helped lead the trip, and to a generous grant from the National Wilderness Stewardship Alliance that made this project possible. If you’d like to join next year’s wilderness volunteer work week, email info@friendsoftheinyo.org.
On the last day in July, Friends of the Inyo’s Stewardship Crew and Trail Ambassadors headed out to Piute Pass, where a recent landslide had covered sections of the trail with debris. The overcast weather, while pleasant for working conditions, caused some trepidation among the crew as to what the rest of the day would look like. Nevertheless, there was work to be done, so we set about leveling the trail tread and moving rocks to prepare for building steps and check dams. After breaking for lunch, we began working out a plan of action for moving an exceptionally large…
Last month, High Country News published an article that posited an interesting thesis; that there might not be a link between outdoor recreation and conservation. Or, as the author titled it “Your stoke won’t save us”. The piece has created some waves in our little world at the intersect of environmental conservation and public lands, as well as the outdoor industry as a whole. The article landed in my e-mail inbox a total of six times, made the rounds of social media, and even prompted a dissenting follow up letter published in this month’s HCN. These pieces come at a time when our public…
June is here, and we are very excited to have our Friends of the Inyo staff more than double in size! Say hello to our amazing summer staff. You’ll find them out on the trails, doing the on the ground work to keep your Eastern Sierra public lands in tip top shape. Stewardship Crew Astra Lincoln, Crew Leader Astra’s spent many seasons as a trail monkey up and down the intermountain west, harvesting plants, teaching antique tool use, and championing the silence of open spaces. She’s passionate about manual labor as a means of spiritual atonement and cultivating a sense of…
A Talk with Mike Johnston Friends of the Inyo Executive Director Wendy Schneider sat down to talk with Eastern Sierra 4WD Club President Mike Johnston to learn more about his thoughts on the relationship between the OHV and conservation communities and the best way to move forward with helping each other to protect and care for our Eastern Sierra public lands. So, how did you get to the Eastern Sierra? Like a lot of the people here, I’m a transplant. I grew up in Palmdale. At that time it had one traffic light. I decided to leave the…