Earth Day at Alum Rock

Volunteers for Outdoor California

Alum Rock Park was founded in 1872 and is the oldest municipal park in the state of California. This is a natural wilderness park with several playground areas surrounded by steep hills which have a network of multi-use and hiking only trails. V-O-Cal worked 1.6 miles of trail in this park as the first project of the season in 2008. There is still plenty of work to get done and although we generally will not plan to come to the same park each year, there were several good reasons to return to Alum Rock Park for 2009.

This year we will concentrate on a bit less distance and plan to do significant work on seven switchbacks on the Sycamore trail. These switchbacks are in significantly worse shape than the section we worked in 2008 and will include removal and replacement of 2x12 timbers as barriers on the inside apex of the switchbacks.

In 2008 this project was on the weekend of Earth Day and we will repeat this for 2009. Earth Day brings significantly more youth volunteers than our average projects. We found that large groups of youth volunteers are not optimally suited for long days digging dirt. Because of this, we will design and implement valuable projects throughout the park that will provide an engaging and worthwhile work for these volunteers that does not necessarily involve the use of sharp and heavy digging tools.