Thanks to volunteer Wendy Marcus for sharing this brief piece about her experience at Bridgeport Trails Day… “We’ve had a house at Twin Lakes for three years, but this is the first time I’ve had the pleasure of helping out Friends of the Inyo with Bridgeport Trails Day (June 30, 2018). I brought along my friend Beth, and we got to work with Astra Lincoln and Dylan Welcome (and Dylan’s mom’s dog, Lady Jane!) and three other volunteers on the Upper Twin Lake Trail, clearing trees from the path as we came across them, improving creek crossings, and trimming brush…
Stewardship
Every year, June Lake Trails Day gets better and better! We love the fun atmosphere of the event, with prize donations from local businesses, a delicious free lunch, and a huge group of volunteers of all ages and walks of life. In 2018 our 44 volunteers did a dazzling job of clearing heavy brush from the Parker Bench and Yost Lake Trails, and showed off their crosscut saw skills by removing seven downed logs. Thanks to our partners, Mono County, June Lake Trails Committee, and the Inyo National Forest, and to all our wonderful volunteers for their hard work!
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…
The third annual Flash Foxy Women’s Climbing Festival stewardship event was an incredible success. One hundred and thirty-five women volunteered their time to pick up hundreds of pounds of trash, protect native plant seedlings, remove an old fence, and clean up campsites in the Buttermilk and the Volcanic Tablelands. One of the highlights of the day was a graffiti removal project led by our friends at the Bay Area Climbers Coalition and Touchstone Climbing. Volunteers decked out in stylish Tyvek suits used paintbrushes to apply a product called Elephant Snot (!) to the graffiti. An hour later, after the Snot…
Each summer, Friends of the Inyo welcomes a crew of enthusiastic, talented individuals to our small staff. Our Stewardship Crew and Trail Ambassadors perform critical work to restore ecosystems and maintain recreational access to our public lands. They coordinate volunteer events, lead interpretive walks, provide information to curious members of the public, and work with our agency partners to make sure our projects are successful. Friends of the Inyo’s seasonal staff are the front lines of public lands stewardship in the Eastern Sierra. We are thrilled to begin our hiring process for seasonal employees. Applications will be due by 5pm…
Below is an excerpt from Julia’s Jeffrey Pine Journal article. Pick up a copy of our Spring JPJ this April for more stories from the Racetrack Project. My first sight of Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa was like a glimpse of another planet. The ancient lakebed was the color of tahini, spread out smooth and flat between jagged desert peaks. At one end, the startling black rock pillars known as the Grandstand caught the eye like a pin on a map. At the other, the famous “racing rocks” lay scattered, each sitting in the furrow it had etched as a mysterious…
In 2007, a massive fire flared up along Oak Creek, just north of Independence in the southern Owens Valley. A catastrophic flood then scoured the creek in 2008, destroying much of the remaining riparian vegetation. Nearly a decade later, the creek is still barely vegetated and unprotected from future floods. We joined the Fort Independence Tribe, the California Native Plants Society, and the Inyo National Forest on December 14 to take a small step toward restoring Oak Creek’s streamside forest. With a troop of 20 volunteers, we worked until sundown and put over 250 locally grown native plants in the…
There’s an assumption that summer is our busy season, but in one week this past November, Friends of the Inyo’s staff illustrated how ambitious and inspiring we are at the following events: Presented about the connection between stewardship and advocacy at Winter Wildlands Alliance’s Grassroots Advocacy Conference in Lake Tahoe. Mobilized our members and the public to provide overwhelming opposition to the proposed gold mine at Conglomerate Mesa at the Inyo County Board of Supervisor’s meeting. Took 91 Mammoth Elementary students out for a Fall Field Day for SnowSchool to learn about watersheds and have fun in the Mammoth Lakes…