June 5, 2007
Mike Wagner-Gallucci, Mount Rainier Recovery Corps Member

Week two of my summer internship with SCA was just as exciting, if not more exciting, than week one. Week two provided an even wider variety of outstanding opportunities with the park. Some excitement for SCA was the arrival of the rest of the corps members on Friday, June 1. Now with a full corps we are ready to really hit the ground running and give a hand wherever help is needed. This week consisted of various activities such as a flood tour of the damage, a trip to Sunrise to shovel out the buildings with an Evergreen College Ecology class, plant salvage, and of course National Trails Day. The rest of the week was filled with some excellent training.

Saturday, June 2nd was a huge day of SCA and Mt. Rainier Park. It was National Trails Day. With all the devastation of the flooding last fall, this day is extremely big. Approximately forty volunteers came out with SCA to help with three different trails projects. The project I had to the opportunity to work was the Carter Falls reroute. The flood completely took away a fairly large portion of the trail and the trails crew had already established a new route. The fifteen volunteers from REI that came out to help with this specific project were extremely eager and excited to work. The project involved re-grading some of the trail to meet the acceptable slope requirements and moving large amounts of soil to other areas of the trail that needed to be filled in. The best way to do this task was to carry buckets of dirt up the trail. This is not an easy job, nor would many people call it fun, but these volunteers were doing it with a smile on their faces and did a great job to top it off. It was really a great day for the Mt. Rainier Trails and National Trails Day.

The day prior to NTD I had assisted with the re-vegetation crew transplanting small shrubs from surrounding areas to be re-planted into the old trail corridor. This is done to steer hikers away from the old trail and stay on the newly constructed trail. With the help of people staying out of the old trail corridor the area can be reclaimed by the forest and enhance the aesthetics of the beauty of the trail.

Another great opportunity I had was to spend a day shoveling snow at Sunrise. Sunrise is the highest point that is accessible by car in the park. SCA and an Ecology class from Evergreen College were lucky enough to be some of the first visitors to the just recently opened area of the park. Before Sunrise could become fully opened and accommodate visitors, a lot of snow had to be shoveled. With approximately 30 shovels moving, we were able to almost uncover the path, buried beneath 6-12 feet of snow, leading into the visitor’s center. It was almost hard to call what we did at Sunrise, work. It was one of the most beautiful places I have seen in my short time here at Mt. Rainier. It would be hard to not enjoy being there, no matter what it is I was doing.

The rest of the week was filled with crucial training of how SCA works. Each of the experienced crew leaders lead workshops on food preparations for a backcountry project, the various gear that we will be using, the wide variety of tools that will be crucial to our projects, and the importance of setting up camp the right way in the backcountry.

With week two coming to a close, I am only more excited for the valuable learning opportunities that will be in store for the rest of the summer.

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