August is here and so is the second session of Cascades Climate Challenge!
As summer temperatures begin in earnest, the intrepid second session students have arrived and are getting set to head out into the field. After meeting at Seatac airport, we spent our first few days getting to know each other and our surroundings.
How big is your social network? Use your e-powers for good and help Cascades Climate Challenge win a grant! Go to the Brighter Planet Project Fund and vote up to 3 times. If we get the most votes, we win $5000.
The money will be used to buy new tents (our current ones aren’t going to make it through the summer), school bus fees (many school districts don’t have field trips because they can’t afford to hire the buses) and supplies for the students (we supply everything the students need for the summer—socks, long underwear, boots, water bottles, raingear, warm fleece, hats—you name it.)
Voting closes June 15, so please spread the word to everyone you know!
The days of the hand-scrawled essay may be gone, but students still are telling stories to their peers, families and teachers about their summer experiences. We are pleased to be able to showcase two videos put together by members of the 2009 Parks Climate Challenge team. The first, by Laura Humes, is a testament to the power of her experience in the North Cascades. The second, by Sydney Jarol, was selected for honorable mention by KCTS in their My Parks! Digital Storytelling competition.
You know it’s serious business when you get a list outlining several different dress codes for the upcoming trip. Last week the Parks Climate Challenge team continued their odyssey, this time meeting in Washington D.C., where they substituted swimsuits for sport coats, hiking boots for heels, and PFDs for neckties. (See a “before” photo here.)
Colin, Jordan and Hannah prepare energy-saving kits.
Audrey and Yvonne plant seeds with students from Cesar Chavez Public Charter school.Less than 24 hours after arriving, the students led other youth in a service project on the National Mall (radio story here), attended a reception on Capitol Hill, presented to Federal Agency representatives and met with Robert Stanton, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Policy Management and Budget. In between engagements the students did some sightseeing, continued planning and developing their service projects and caught up with each other.
PCC students rehearse their presentations for the Federal agency representatives.Somehow in the midst of prepping for DC, working on the upcoming service project and heading back to school, Sydney found time to create an entry for the KCTS Digital Storytelling Competition and won honorable mention!
Donya, Sydney and Araceli work the room.
“We are going to change the world”
They climbed up steep mountain trails into clouds; toured a dam powerhouse; bathed in freezing snowmelt streams; canoed across white-capped lakes; withstood a heat wave; taught fifth-graders about climate change; walked through old forest fire burns; sat out a lightning storm on Desolation Peak; interviewed scientists, rangers, firefighters, journalists and rodeo-watchers; and sang, hiked, documented and laughed their way across North Cascades National Park.
With many surprises, discoveries and ‘firsts’, the inaugural Parks Climate Challenge team completed the field phase of their experience in great style. After 33 days in the North Cascades studying climate change, what do the Parks Climate Challenge students have to say?
“We’re the ones who are going to influence the next generation. Once we get on track, they’re going to follow suit.”
“It’s our lifetime now and we’re the ones that are going to have to live with it. If we start early, then by the time we’re adults, we’ll be able to do something.”
“We are going to change the world.”
It’s been an exciting two weeks with the Parks Climate Challenge crew. After gathering everybody in Seattle, we took off for the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center to pack for our first camping trip.
This was just one of the many firsts we’ve celebrated on the trip so far: first camping trip, first s’mores,
Refining our s’more technique
Ladies and gentlemen, meet your 2009 Parks Climate Challenge instructional team, Megan, Nick, Ian and Aneka!
What is the Parks Climate Challenge you ask? From our point of view it’s: one month, four instructors, twenty students, 620 student-days, and 1.8 million calories (Yes, we did the math.) After days of packing food, calling students, counting gear, discussing strategy, rehearsing logistics, preparing lessons and caching equipment, we are finally starting to feel almost ready to receive 20 kids from Washington D.C., Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago. The whole lot of us will spend the month of July traveling all over the North Cascades National Park learning about the National Park Service, climate change and the power of youth leadership.
The students will be arriving on Monday, so the four of us will spend the next two days buying last-minute items and putting the finishing touches on our lessons before taking one last day of well-deserved rest. Stay tuned for further dispatches!
May 30 was a great day for a paddle in Seattle, with full sun and a light breeze to take the edge off. With a myriad of wild lakes, rivers and open sound waters to choose from, the Duwamish Waterway hardly seems like a choice location for an excursion. An EPA Superfund site, the Duwamish River flows through the backsides of various industries – shipyards, cement factories, and scrap plants to name a few. It is a heavily traveled waterway, where industry supercedes habitat. But don’t tell that to the osprey, purple martins, killdeer, bald eagles, great blue herons and other birds we saw out on the water that day.
Cruising past a cement plant
Winter may be time for hibernation, but spring is fast approaching, ready or not! Our field excursions have been hitting the trails the past few weekends and watching the signs and cycles of of change. Last weekend the Nooksack Snowshoe excursion went to the riverbed again. No hoar crystals anymore, but there was plenty to see. We checked out elk tracks, followed a female coyote preparing for pups and traced a set a of striped skunk tracks directly to the source! (“Whoa, everybody take a step back, there she is!”)
The recent temperature inversion set has had a noticeable effect in the cities, with cold freezing fog, but up in the mountains that same phenomena has been creating sunny skies and melt-freeze sun crusts on the snow. On Saturday morning we headed up the North Fork of the Nooksack River to check out what kinds of goings-on happen in the winter. It was pretty cold, and the snow was very crusty.
