It's up to us to keep Yosemite clean

Trash Talk - Keeping Eastern Madera County beautiful

(Updated: Thursday, August 07, 2008, 6:56 PM)

This monthly column for the Sierra Star is intended to increase awareness and provide education regarding recycling, littering and community beautification. Each column features interesting facts and relevant tips and resources. As we increase our earth-wise habits, we can indeed become a proud community.

Climber Ken Yager has been coming to Yosemite since 1972. The park's beauty and countless cliffs have kept him returning for decades, but during that time it has been impossible for Yager to ignore something else.

Yager has been disappointed and frustrated with the growing human footprint left on the park by the 3 million plus visitors every year. The summer season brings in the majority of the visitors and with them comes the ever increasing problem of litter. Yager decided to do something about it four years ago by getting his fellow climbers involved.

The Yosemite Climbing Association's primary goal was to conduct an intensive cleaning of all areas of the park followed by the next goal of promoting awareness of the issue and to educate the public on how to live and play responsibly in our beautiful National Park. There are now volunteers from The National Park Service, Yosemite Association, Delaware North, tourists and countless volunteers from Oakhurst and other local communities who will participate in the clean up.

The fall 2007 event was the fourth and a huge success with 2,945 volunteers contributing 18,335 man hours. The cleaning lasted for five days, clearing 132 miles of roadways, 80 plus miles of trails, and The Merced River corridor from Happy Isles to the NPS Warehouse in El Portal. All lodging, campgrounds, and housing areas in the Valley and Tuolumne were cleaned. Everything from cigarette butts, microtrash and toilet paper in the woods was removed. The cleaning was contagious and people jumped in to helped participants fill their bags. In addition, certain abandoned infrastructures were removed as well as was an old car down in the canyon.

Each volunteer brought their bags of trash back to Yosemite Village for weighing after they completed their area. In all, more than 42,330 pounds of trash was collected, and everything that could be recycled, was. About 32,000 pounds of the weight was from special projects the group took on to help rid the park of old infrastructure that the National Park Service did not have the funding to remove.

The cleanup effort has continued to grow over the years, with more volunteers reaching out into more areas to collect more trash, and Yager hopes to get even more people involved in the fifth annual Yosemite Facelift.

This year the event will take place for five days from Wednesday, Sept. 24 through Sunday, Sept. 28. Volunteers are encouraged to show up on any of these days in front of the visitors center in Yosemite Valley for any length of time to help rid Yosemite of trash. All materials will be provided and sign-ups available for the raffle prizes.

Implement the three R's - Reduce, Re-use, and Recycle - to decrease waste, preserve our natural resources, and keep Eastern Madera County beautiful. Written and submitted by Keeping Eastern Madera County Beautiful, a sub-committee of the North Fork Chamber of Commerce, Linda Shepler.