Volunteer afternoon of Badlands Wilderness Restoration

TRADITIONAL MOUNTAINEERING ™
www.TraditionalMountaineering.org ™ and also www.AlpineMountaineering.org ™

Bend businesses sponsor a Badlands "Wilderness Restoration" Day
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Our group of eleven volunteers was tasked with installing a map at the more remote Larry Chitwood Trailhead.

Part of our large group of volunteers was taken on a short hike while five of us worked on the map installation.
The Fobbit leader of the hike became lost in the Badlands Wilderness,
stranding those of us volunteers waiting at the Trailhead. The group returned more than one and a half hours overdue
with the help of cell phone instructions. The Leader had a trailhead map but reportedly, no one in the group used a compass or GPS
to return from the wild. Unfortunately, the need for more sign posts in the Wilderness was The Fobbit's lesson learned.

This is one of the "ways" leading away from the Larry Chitwood Trail Head.
This obtrusive “woody debris pile method” of closing trails and ways has been a discredited management practice for many years.
The gathering of wood artifacts from the last 100 years damages the area plants and wildlife and puts a heavy handed human mark on the wilderness.
One of the sponsors of the afternoon wrote: "On Friday, May 8, we hosted an event in the new Badlands Wilderness near Bend, Oregon.
75 volunteers showed up for an afternoon of work, raising trail signs, "camouflaging old roads and cleaning up trailheads".

Recently, former Bend Mayor John Shubert, a Forest Service Trails expert, was employed by the BLM to “restore” old roads and ways in the Crooked River Wilderness Study Area. The packed ways were broken up and raked by volunteers while “relocating plants and debris to re-vegetate and disguise closed roads”. Clumps of desert plants were carefully placed to mimic the natural distribution. ONDA Managers participated in the volunteer day, March 4, 2009.
This informed process should be used in The Badlands Wilderness.

The apple green and dark maroon spray paint in aerosol cans provided by The Fobbits was "festive" we volunteers decided but they were not the
traditional BLM logo colors of natural wood, brown and yellow. BLM managers need to provide The Fobbits with more direction.
Note: Please be sure you have gone to the full sized page by clicking "here" on the line always below the page title. --Webmeister Speik

From our popular calendar of interesting events:
Friday, May 8, 2009, Volunteer Day and fun at The Badlands Wilderness
Thank Teague Hatfield' Foot Zone, Rod Bien's Patagonia by Pandora's Backpack, ONDA and The Conservation Alliance for a day in the field on Friday, May 8 in the NEW Badlands Wilderness from 12pm - 4:30pm. Please RSVP: Teague@footzonebend.com or stop by the store to sign up. The FootZone will provide lunch for the first 15 people that sign up! Remember, you must RSVP through one of the sponsors!

Environmental
USFS Five Buttes Healthy Forest fire reduction program in Central Oregon
Bob McGown, AAC Section Chair, builds a telescope pad at Pine Mountain Observatory
Becoming an Outdoors Woman classes in LaPine, Oregon with the ODFW
Pulling barbed wire fence at the Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge with ONDA
A tour of the aftermath of the B & B forest fire with the Sierra Club
Adopt-a-Road with TraditionalMountaineering
The Bend Bicycle Festival 2004
Wolves introduced to the High Desert Museum
Twenty old growth Juniper stolen from The Badlands WSA More information
A sustainable way to use feathers to adorn my lady
ODFW clinic - Becoming an Outdoors Woman
President Bush holds photo opportunities
Trail Crew builds a log bridge over Spring Creek
Sierra Club holds a Christmas party
Tour fire ravaged Davis Lake
IMBA helps COTA build trails
South Sister climbers trail relocated
President Bush hopes no child will be left behind
Adopt-A-Highway with TraditionalMountaineering
Department of Inferior dumps wilderness protection
An ODFW juvenile steelhead sampling project near John Day, Oregon
The ODFW juvenile steelhead survey in the stream
Owyhee Canyon wilderness study area in south east Oregon
ONDA's Owyhee wilderness inventory camp near Rome, Oregon
Riverfest river cleanup in Bend Oregon
USFS Mud Bog poster
A Pay to Play bust
President Bush reassures us that SUVs do not damage the environment!
President Bush overlooking the environment
Al Gore and his young son summit Mt. Rainier
Fee Demo demonstration in Central Oregon