Let's Pick It Up_Next Weekend!
You know this and I know this: there were just about a bazillion more skiers at the Snoqualmie Pass snow-parks this winter than ever before. And evidently a LOT of them don't respect our mother, the earth, as much as you and I do. Skiers/sledders/snowshoers left enormous amounts of trash behind; witness Nick's pickup truck packed full of broken sled pieces from a clean-up he did at Crystal Springs earlier this month ... and he reports that was only a fraction of the total amount of garbage there. So sad. But that just means that we, you and I and all of us, must make up for these recalcitrant children and clean up the mess.
And next weekend is the day! All the snow-parks have their annual clean-ups scheduled for next Saturday, May 22, and Cabin Creek will be doing clean-up on both Saturday and Sunday. At Cabin Creek, we'll have trash bags and a check-in sheet at the cabin by 9:00 both days; take a look at the check-in sheet to see what areas have already been cleaned and what areas still need cleaning, and when you're done, drop by the cabin again to check off what you took care of. Sorry, no chicken barbecue this year -- Covid, you know -- but plenty of fresh air, maybe even some sunshine, and a great strength workout, as we bend and stretch and lift and push and pull, all in the gym of the outside.
Be prepared for nastiness (we're talking seriously heavy duty gloves here). This is what some of it looked like last year, and it's likely to be worse this year.
But also be prepared for surprise moments of beauty, because, spring.
Meanwhile, the Summit at Snoqualmie had its own clean-up on Saturday along Highway 906, the access road between Hyak and the summit. A small team of KSCers joined in, partly out of a spirit of community and partly out of curiosity, to see what a clean-up is like when it has corporate bucks supporting it. The Summit and Dru Bru were the sponsors today, and they provided hard hats (if you felt the need), bright safety vests, gloves, and those long-handled picker-upper things for the work party, then door prizes and a free Bru afterward.
There was a good-sized crowd there, and we split into groups: our small KSC team joined a crew of firefighters from the Snoqualmie Pass fire district and Zach, a Dru Bru manager and the project leader, and headed down to the Silver Fir chair, then worked our way up one side of the road to Central and back down the other side. Picking up trash is never fun, but spending the morning hanging with Zach and the firefighters was a treat, and we had great conversations! We invited the firefighters to join us next week at Cabin Creek and they said they would like to, if it fits with their crew staging and scheduling.
Zach estimated that, between all three crews, we ended up with about a thousand pounds of trash, bagged and stacked up with other road debris and hardware and car parts too bulky for the bags, at the side of the road, waiting for the DOT truck to pick it up on Monday. Not bad for a morning's work!
Finally our work was done and we headed back to the summit, too late for the door prizes but in plenty of time for a hot dog and a Bru. One hard but satisfying day in the books, all primed to do it again next weekend. See you there!
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