Earth Day in Sinks Canyon

In honor of the 41^st Earth Day we teamed up with the Sinks Canyon State Park and the BLM to get our hands dirty and our public lands clean. A successful 112 service hours were clocked rerouting trail, building steps and closing off social trails below Killer Cave in Sinks Canyon.

Before the trail crew started swinging the pick madox we fueled up on food donated by local Lander business. Shielding ourselves from the canyon’s breeze, we listened to the State Park officials Jamie Simonson and Darrel Trembly and the BLM representative Brandon Thielke talk about impacts in the canyon. The conversation focused on how to better educate the public about regulations in the canyon, which can be a complicated issue given the mix of management shared between the State Park Service, BLM and the Forest Service. It was a great forum for community members and the land managers to inform each other on the expectations needed to preserve this unique canyon for wildlife as well as recreational uses.

In four hours with 25 volunteers we accomplished all that we set out to do. We hauled burned juniper up the hill to close off social trails, rerouted a portion of the trail to better sustain any water erosion and built new steps for easier hiking. The crew was a diverse mix of people made up of some NOLSies, students from Central Wyoming College Outdoors Club, and of course some good Samaritans and longtime Lander locals.

Thank you to all the volunteers who scrambled up and down steep trail carrying trees, tools and rocks. A special thanks goes out to the Subway, Tony’s Pizza, Dominos, Safeway, Mr. D’s, Sinks Canyon State Park, Forest Service and Lander BLM for helping collaborate on such a rewarding day.