On a 22 day backpacking course this July, a group of teens from around the country took part in a service project around shimmering Rae Lake. This project, located in Sierra National Forest, was the first in a series of service days this year that Outward Bound California (OBCA) crews would be doing as part of their course.

The program, funded by the National Forest Foundation, provided stipends to four Wilderness Ranger Interns, paid for important tools like silky saws and shovels, and structured the service around reducing the impact of humans in the wilderness.

Rikki Dunn, one of OBCA’s instructors, was part of the project’s pilot program in 2014 at Saddle Lake. “An ethic of service is an outcome of every Outward Bound course and I think it is important that the projects are applicable to the course experience,” Dunn explained. “High Sierra courses are wilderness-based so it makes sense to do a service project nearby. This partnership with the Forest Service and the National Forest Foundation will dramatically improve our ability to provide meaningful service projects for students in the field. It is also a great opportunity for students to interact with Forest Service staff, creating a space for positive relationships between wilderness management and public users.”

Dunn was a Wilderness Ranger Intern in Washington several years ago, an experience which he says gave him the strong wilderness ethic that he now imparts on all of his crews. “I teach low impact travel and camping techniques and try to get students psyched on destroying human developments like fire rings and cairns. The connection they make with the course area amplifies the service project buy-in which in turn helps get students involved with giving back to their communities at home.”

The morning of the service project, students learned that in Wilderness Areas like the one Rae Lake is located, campfires are prohibited. The crews’ goal was to create a natural visual space for the ecosystem around the lake to thrive, and to reduce the impact of human use. Students used thin, serrated ‘silky’ saws to remove large stripped branches jutting out from the dirt worked together to move heavy logs away from a fire ring near the lake’s edge. They picked up tiny bits of trash, scattered campfire ashes, and rolled unnaturally placed rocks back to the mountain’s edge.

Collin Farmer, one of the Wilderness Ranger Interns working that day, took a five day course with OBCA before starting his internship. He learned about the partnership between OBCA and the National Forest Foundation, navigated creeks and mountains in the John Muir Wilderness, and became familiar with many Outward Bound instructors. Farmer explained the type of service the interns and OBCA crews would be doing this summer.

“With this grant, we have the resources to work on trail maintenance, meadow monitoring, surveying endangered wildlife, and deconstructing campsites from sensitive areas. The goal is to uphold the Wilderness Act of 1964, which sets apart land for primitive recreation and solitude, regulated to minimize human impact for future generations.”

`The energetic crew of teenagers worked in pairs, and in two hours, cleared six campsites. When asked how they felt when completing the morning’s mission, Donna, a high school junior simply said, “It feels good to give back to a place that I have grown to love. I would have no idea that people had camped here if I was walking by.” Outward Bound California appreciates the National Forest Foundation for their support in giving students that feeling of stewardship for our National Parks by working on real needs in the back country.