General Site Information

May 22: Members arrive in Seattle and travel to Camp Don Bosco
May 23 - 25: Orientation
May 26 - 27: Wilderness First Aid
May 28: Travel day from Camp Don Bosco to River Ranch camp
May 29 - June 2: Work skills
June 3: Leave camp for an awesome road trip to Santa Fe National Forest!
June 5: National Trails Day - go love your favorite trail!
June 8: Arrive in Santa Fe and hike into the Winsor Trail campsite
June 9 - 21: First hitch, on the Winsor Trail, Pecos District, with Santa Fe Crew 1. Work will include three bridges; two sets of rock steps; installation of a sign post; out with the old wood water bars and in with the new rock ones; and re-establishing tread by armoring, insloping and outsloping.
June 22 - July 5: Second hitch, on the Water Canyon, Mitchell, and Valle Canyon Trails, Española District. Work will include a four-step re-route, tread work, and a bit of brushing.

The Carson-Iceberg Wilderness is a spectacular area of California's Sierras. The wilderness area contains land on both sides of the Sierra Nevada Crest, and as a result has a variety of land characteristics due to elevation and precipitation levels. The trail crew will be working mainly on the eastern side of the Carson-Iceberg doing trail maintenance. Home base during days off will be the Wheeler Guard station located outside of Bridgeport, CA.

The Hoover Wilderness is home to jagged granite peaks, alpine lakes, and high passes in a 128,000 acre designated wilderness area that lies to the East of Yosemite National Park in California. The Hoover is managed by the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and the Inyo National Forest, and we'll be working entirely in the H-T section.

The Hoover is largely high elevation alpine environments. Bridgeport will serve as our base at 6500 feet, with the mountains rising dramatically from there. Temperatures in the area can range from very warm, especially when the high altitude sun is out, to chilly at night.

We're a six person trail crew working in the area for twelve weeks through this summer. We'll be working to open up the trails on the district, putting in a lot of miles to clear downfall that has accumulated over the past few years while stopping to focus on a few of the trickier spots.

We'll be working in Jeffrey Pine, Pinyon Pine, and Juniper forests at lower elevations, shifting to Ponderosa Pine, Aspen, and Fir forests a little higher, and then finally shifting to a more rugged alpine environment at even higher elevations. We'll be sharing the area with black bears, mountain lions, deer, and marmots among others.

The Kentucky Native Plant Corps will be working in the Mammoth Cave National Park and several surrounding state parks and nature preserves. Mammoth Cave National Park is located in the heart of Kentucky’s South-Central karst, an extensive system of subterranean drainage basins covering more than 400 square miles. Atop this labyrinth, lies a biologically diverse ecosystem inextricably interlinked with the ecosystems underground. A unique set of physiographic influences and diverse habitat types led to the area being designated as an International Biosphere Reserve in 1990. The park was also named as a World Heritage Site in 1981.

Mammoth Cave was established as a national park in 1941 but evidence suggests that the earliest human exploration of the cave occurred more than 4000 years ago! These aboriginal explorers probed the depths of the cave for salt and mineral deposits. The true exploration of the caves began in earnest with their rediscovered in the late 18th century. In 1926 only 40 miles of passageway had been mapped. As survey techniques improved many caves, believed to be separate, were found to be connected and today Mammoth Cave is recognized internationally as the longest cave system in the entire world. The cave system, measuring over 350 miles long, is three times longer than any other known cave. Even if the second and third longest caves were connected together Mammoth would still be longer with over a hundred miles to spare!

Aside from this staggering feature, the botanical diversity alone is deserving of international attention. The park, encompassing merely 53,000 surface acres, contains more than 1,300 flowering species; rivaling that of the Great Smoky Mountains in one tenth the acreage. The South-Central region of Kentucky is located in multiple transitional zones. To the west lie open grasslands and drier oak-hickory forests and to the east lie moist mixed mesophytic forests. The climate is also influenced jointly by the warmer sub-tropical regions to the south and the colder climates to the north. Many species found within the park, and its surrounding areas, are at the northern, southern, eastern, and western limits of their natural range. A wide variety of habitats further support differing plant communities. These include: dry upland flats and sandstone-capped ridges, limestone exposed slopes, ravines and karst valleys, broad alluvial bottoms along the Green River, gorge-like hemlock ravines, deep sinks with exposed subterranean streams, old-growth timber, successional growth forests, barrens and savannah habitats, and wetlands, including ponds, forest swamps, springs, seasonal wet woodlands, and cobble bars and banks along the Green River.

Botanical surveys in the park have found 25 species listed as endangered, threatened, or of special concern by Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission. Mammoth Cave National Park is a vital refuge for the protection of plant communities and individual species in danger. This mosaic of habitats and diversity of forests types and grasslands is, unfortunately, just as attractive to a wide variety of introduced plants. The Student Conservation Association, in close cooperation with the National Park Service and the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife, will be working diligently to help monitor and control the spread of these invasive exotic plants. These plants include Japanese honeysuckle, garlic mustard, kudzu, Nepalese browntop, tree-of-heaven, oriental bittersweet, non-native wisterias, and paulownia. These species out-compete native species and, behind habitat destruction, are the single greatest threats to biodiversity.