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March 30, 2007
Kevin Bacher, Volunteer Program Manager

I am constantly amazed both by how much support we continue to receive from the community, and by how much work it's been to prepare for this summer's expanded volunteer effort.

In the first category, I've spent yesterday and today coordinating a letter to send out under the bannerhead of the Northwest Recovery Coalition, the partnership we've set up between Mount Rainier National Park and the Student Conservation Association. My SCA counterpart, Ali Saperstein, and I wanted to make sure that we had every name possible in that mailing list, so I went back through my notes from the past few weeks to ensure that I'd included everyone who'd contacted me. That ended up taking most of my morning, because I had about 40 new names to add to the mailing list. The support is literally overwhelming, and I apologize again to all of you whom I have not yet called back in person.

In the second category, our staff has been busy this week working out the logistics of managing and supporting our flood recovery teams, both those we're hiring through the Student Conservation Association and those who will come from the general public. Our recovery funding is not unlimited, and will probably have to last for two years, so there's been some careful planning involved to decide what resources to commit to this summer's program and what to save for next year. Then we have to figure out where to house all of our extra employees, interns, and volunteers, given that housing in the park is extremely limited. (If anyone has good suggestions for inexpensive temporary housing near the park, give us a call.) Our SCA "field teams" will probably spend the summer living in platform tents, but there's been much discussion about the pros and cons of staging these resources at the old Longmire Campground versus the fields surrounding the Tahoma Woods Education Center. Cooking facilities, bathrooms, and showers must be found or brought in to support the crews. And then we have to think through the implications of bringing in large groups of public volunteers for multiple nights on top of that, something we've rarely done in the past but expect to do regularly this year. The devil is always in the details, and the details consume a lot of time.

That being said, I'm looking forward to having full-time help starting next week! Jill Baum, the Student Conservation Association's program manager for our flood recovery effort, will be starting April 5th, along with Will Ehrenclou, who will be helping with program logistics. I look forward to introducing them to you in this blog. Their first priorities will be to finish resolving plans for our field camp; organizing our massive list of volunteer requests; and starting to put together a calendar of specific projects to match volunteers up with.

I sent out a letter to all of our park staff this afternoon, asking them to contribute to our calendar of volunteer projects. Hopefully, this list will now begin to grow at an increasingly fast rate. The fact that the snow is finally beginning to melt in the lowest elevations of the park will help tremendously. I've also sent a letter to our existing volunteers, letting them know what's coming this summer and expressing our hope that those experienced volunteers would serve in positions of leadership for the new folks.

There's a lot of work yet to be done... but hopefully, within the next week or two, we'll have the summer off the ground and our first public volunteer projects on the calendar. Stay tuned.

March 18, 2007
Kevin Bacher, Volunteer Program Manager

There is an old Chinese curse (or so they say) that goes, "may you live in interesting times." Whatever else you may say about this past winter, we are definitely living in interesting times! The great flood of November 2006 may have swept away roads, trails, and even campgrounds in Mount Rainier National Park, but it also swept in a tremendous opportunity for positive change and growth in the park’s volunteer program.

Mount Rainier’s volunteer program has thrived over the years, despite the fact that we have not had a full-time position dedicated to managing the program since 1999—and that was a volunteer. I’ve coordinated the program for the past 4 ½ years as a collateral duty, averaging about 30% of my time, and with the help of a seasonal employee for a few months during the summer. We’ve averaged more than 900 volunteers per year (about 200 individuals and the rest as part of organized work parties) who contribute about 40,000 hours of volunteer time.

It quickly became apparent, after The Flood, that 30% of my time wasn’t going to be enough. I was, if you’ll pardon the pun, flooded with offers of help, far more than I could respond to (and if you were one of the people I didn’t get back to in a timely manner, I humbly apologize).

The Student Conservation Association (SCA) offered to form a partnership with us and to provide extra staff and internship positions in areas like trail repair, revegetation, and volunteer coordination. They also posted a notice on their website asking for people to sign up on a mailing list as potential volunteers. They received more than 700 responses in the first three weeks.

Clearly, we need a new way of doing business this year. The first steps have been to make my position full-time, and to hire a program manager through the SCA to help. Jill Baum will arrive April 4th, and with her assistance I look forward to beginning to catch up on all the e-mails and phone messages that have accumulated. This expanded volunteer program website is another important step, as it will give Jill and me a means to communicate with all of you at the same time. So send me your questions and comments! I’ll address them here and try to keep you as up to date as I can with our progress toward placing volunteers on the ground in the park.

In that vein, here’s what’s next: We have begun compiling a list of volunteer assignments, both long-term needs and short-term projects that people can participate in for an afternoon, or a weekend, or even a full week at a time. I’ll start posting those projects on this website as soon as I can nail down the details, with the earliest project probably starting in late April or early May. Jill will help me to work out the logistics of providing campsites, equipment, transportation, and crew leaders. We may call on our seasoned volunteers from past years to help provide leadership for new members of our volunteer team. It’ll take some time to get off the ground, but by July, hopefully, we’ll be in full swing, with teams of volunteers all over the park working side by side with national park rangers to protect the resources of Mount Rainier National Park and serve its visitors.

Very interesting, indeed. With your help, we’ll turn that curse into a blessing!