Zion Day 2

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Another chilly night but turned out to be a clear day. Today Jessica took us over to the staff living areas to work with Alex and Matt the Intern. Zion has a very impressive program for recycling, reducing their impact and in general trying to keep things intact and the main camp area is fairly compact, only a mile or two large. One of the things they do is provide bicycles for the staff to use to transport themselves around the park area from the living quarters and between the main areas in order to reduce the use of fossil fuels. So our project for the day was to help make sure these bikes were in good shape and ready to go for next month when the staff starts arriving.

I don’t know much about bikes except how to ride them so this was really interesting to learn. Some of these just needed a good wipe down; some needed more work like tire and chain replacement. We did what we could and documented he rest and there were only a few bikes that needed more work beyond this general maintenance. Alex has more of a sustainability background and that is his main focus at the Zion campground. He mentioned how well the camp was doing on reducing waste and that their goal was to be 80% reusable by 2013. They currently were producing less than 40% waste, have an intensive recycling program that the campers are encouraged to use and have installed alternative energy sources on most of their main buildings. I would assume that all the nation’s campgrounds are under similar orders and wonder how well we do at the Kansas sites. Makes me feel a little bit lazy in regard to my recycling attempts at home and that is something I will need to work more aggressively on when I get home. Sorting isn’t the problem but getting to the recycling center just doesn’t happen on a regular enough basis ...goal two.

Once we were done there was plenty of blue sky and time to do a good hike so I went along the river and visited the Emerald Pools. The upper trails were closed but because of all the snow, the waterfalls were heavier than usual. I walked along the river toward the Cathedral and ended up doing this paved trail that took me up the side of one of the mountain faces. The view from the top was fantastic. We had a good campfire tonight and Che is a great fire tender, he keeps adding just the right size wood to keep it going. The stars were amazing tonight and it's wonderful how brightly they shine when they aren't competing with the city lights.