Chattermarks

The final North Cascades Wild trips of the 2010 summer embarked on their Ross Lake adventures during the middle of August. A total of eighteen students from Skagit, Whatcom, and King Counties and six instructors spent twelve days forming community, practicing leadership and outdoor skills, doing stewardship work, and learning about and exploring their extended backyard. Highlights from the trips include canoeing on Ross Lake, a silent canoe in Devils Creek Canyon, meeting and working with North Cascades National Park employees, backpacking, exploring ideas of wilderness and Wilderness, star gazing, shared laughter, meeting supporters of NC Wild on the Ross Lake Mule, campfires, and hiking Desolation Peak.

Trip 5 on the dock at Ross Lake Resort. Title photo: North Cascades Wild students canoeing on Ross Lake.

Trip 6 at the Ross Dam Trailhead.

For our stewardship projects, these trips worked with North Cascades National Park trail crew to expand Deer Lick camp to accommodate larger groups (such as North Cascades Wild!). Students and instructors swung Pulaskis and sledgehammers, wrestled root wads out of the ground, dug out layers of duff in order to create new tent pads and trails to them, built a new cook site and campfire ring, and rerouted a trail to the toilet. Mike Brondi, North Cascades National Park, led students in collecting seeds to be grown at the NPS nursery in Marblemount, removing invasive species, and replanting an area using plants grown at the nursery from seeds collected by previous NC Wild groups. Mike also taught the students about the importance of fire to some tree species in the North Cascades ecosystem, specifically lodgepole pines to open their serotinous cones, by burning potato chips and showing how the cones opened up as a result of the heat. Students also had the opportunity to assist with research being done in the park. From canoes and snorkeling in Ross Lake, students observed red sided shiners and recorded information about their location and behavior, as well as collected data about the water.

Jason, Jealisa, Cleo, and Marcus with one of the roots they removed at Deer Lick.

» Continue reading The end of summer on Ross Lake

After finishing our first week of classes following winter break, the graduate students and staff at the North Cascades Institute had a fun and busy weekend, hosting instructors and staff from two other environmental education centers. The 4^th Annual Instructor Exchange included IslandWood, Wilderness Awareness School and North Cascades Institute.

When everyone had arrived on Saturday, graduate students led a tour of our LEED certified buildings, giving the visiting students a chance to compare our classrooms, lodges and living spaces with their own. A social hour before dinner gave everyone time to start getting to know each other. Following dinner, we gave an introduction to our programs by sharing the Parks Climate Challenge video. Later, our Program Director, Laura Busby, shared more information about our adult and family programs, summer youth programs, and a little bit about Mountain School and the graduate program. We ended the evening with a trivia game, designed to test participants’ knowledge of the natural history of the region, as well as test their skills as environmental educators. Some of the challenges included identifying quotes from well known environmentalists, writing mission statements for ridiculous non-profits and composing and performing a new campfire song.

» Continue reading Sharing our place