This year is also the 100th Anniversary of the National Park Service! Centennial events are planned throughout the year, and we are pleased to include geocachers in the celebration!
Your hosts for the occasion will be Volunteer Program Manager Kevin Bacher (aka K2D2) and Volunteer Coordinator Crow (aka Hoppingcrow).
Most years, our work focuses on setting up platform tents for volunteers to use throughout the summer. This year, Mother Nature delivered a special project to us: a wind storm in November 2015 that blew down 65 trees in the Longmire Stewardship Campground. There were trees down throughout the park, but nowhere was hit as hard, or in such concentration, as here. We believe that the configuration of the storm led to localized wind bursts higher than anywhere else.
Now, many of you who have participated in our CITO in the past will immediately think "Picnic Tables! What happened to those beautiful picnic tables we all built by hand a few years ago?" Amazingly, not a single picnic table was hit by a falling tree! And not only picnic tables, but bathrooms, shelters, fire hydrants, and other structures were all spared, sometimes by mere inches.
Nevertheless, the campground is a bit of a mess. Now that the weather has improved, our maintenance crews are busy sawing up the fallen trees and making preparations to remove them for use in other projects elsewhere in the park. But they will leave behind a lot of hand work yet to be done. This is where you come in! This year's projects will include the following:
- Cleaning up storm debris and turning it into BIG piles, to be removed by our maintenance crews at a later date
- Restoring the terrain where ruts have been left by heavy equipment
- Rehabbing campsites that have been damaged by fallen trees or their removal
- General site maintenance
Most years, we also set up platform tents for use during the summer. That will not be the priority this CITO, as it looks like heavy equipment work will continue through the month of May. If we put up platform tents this year, we will do so at a later date.
Safety: As with all volunteer events, safety is our highest priority. We will conduct a safety briefing at the beginning of the project, and provide you with hard hats and gloves. You are welcome to bring your own personal safety equipment if you have it.
Weather Alternatives: The CITO will proceed rain or shine, though poor weather may abbreviate our efforts. The campground is currently snow-free. Here's a link to a current weather forecast for the Mountain.
Time and place: Meet at the posted coordinates (the campground hosts' residence at the back of the Community Building at the north end of the Longmire Campground) at 9:30 AM on Saturday, June 4. To find the project location, turn at the Longmire Museum and drive across the historic wooden suspension bridge.
Camping: The Longmire Campground is a perfect location for spending the night (at no charge for volunteers). Tents and small RVs (ideally 24 feet max) are welcome. There are no hookups, but you'll have access to hot showers in the bath house. Please RSVP if you plan to camp, and let us know what kind of site you need.
Food and Clothing: Long pants, boots, and work gloves are recommended (we'll provide gloves if you don't have your own). Bring rain gear and layers depending on weather. We'll provide hard hats and tools. Bring water, a sack lunch, and snacks. Temperatures can drop into the 30s at night, so bring hats, gloves, and warm clothes if you plan to camp.
Raffle: As in previous years, we will have a small "swag" raffle over the lunch break. Donations of swag items are welcome! Contact me in advance if you have anything to share.
Entrance Fee: The park entrance fee is $20 for a one-week family pass, though this is always waived for working volunteers. Identify yourself as a volunteer working on the Longmire Campground project and the rangers at the gate will wave you through.
Other opportunities: To learn more about Mount Rainier, visit the park website or the Rainier Volunteers Blog, where you'll find many other opportunities to volunteer throughout the summer. Other opportunities that are tailor-made for geocachers include citizen science projects monitoring amphibians, butterflies, and plants.
And, of course, many great geocaches are available locally, including several virtuals and earth caches in the park and traditionals, multis, and puzzle caches just outside the park boundary. The park is also part of both the Visit Rainier Centennial GeoTour and the Find Your Park GeoTour. Bring your GPSr and come prepared!
Thanks for helping out! Join us to get some good work done, meet new geofriends, CITO The Centennial, and #FindYourPark!
History and Background: The genesis of this project began in November 2006, when heavy rainfall caused damaging floods throughout the park. In September 2007, Team Misguided organized the first annual Mount Rainier Recovery CITO Event, which received positive feedback from park staff as well as local press coverage. The crew built trails, removed debris, and did some replanting. In June 2008, hydnsek organized a great sequel, another Mount Rainier CITO, this time helping to shovel out the Cougar Rock Campground, which was buried by a record spring snowpack. Their amazing work allowed the campground to open two weeks earlier than it would have otherwise. In 2009, another heavy snow year, geocachers at the CITO The Mountain event dug out campsites at the Longmire Volunteer Campground and set up platform tents for volunteers to use through the summer. Participants in CITO 2010 cleaned up storm debris and, again, set up platform tents for the summer. CITO the Mountain 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 included similar projects, along with construction of beautiful new wooden picnic tables in the sturdy style of the Columbia Conservation Corps.
Organizing the event is K2D2, a local geocacher who also happens to be the Volunteer and Outreach Program Manager at Mount Rainier National Park. As in years past, we'll be staging in the historic Longmire Campground, tucked away in the forest on the south side of the Nisqually River at Longmire. This site served as a public campground for more than 30 years before becoming an overflow campground in the late 1960s when the more modern and more easily accessible Cougar Rock Campground opened. It closed for good in the early 1980s. In 2009, thanks to the help of geocachers and other volunteers, the campground reopened for use by volunteers and other special groups. Its 31 individual sites, two group sites, and half-dozen platform tents are used throughout the summer by volunteers and other working park partners as a base of operations while working in the park. It even has a bath house with showers--the only public showers in the park, but only available to volunteers! Accessible campsites and a group fire ring were added in 2015, and a bathroom renovation and group picnic shelter are underway for 2016.