THE FRIENDS AUGUST 2005 PROJECT WEEKEND
by Robert Marlow
Board Member

The 2005 FOCLNP work weekend was held on August 26-28. Several members arrived Friday afternoon and stayed the night in adjacent sites in the Mazama campground complex enjoying a good meal, friendship, and conversation.

On Saturday morning we were joined by several other friends and park staff members Dave Brennen (Chief Ranger) and Linda Sue Bailey (sign coordinator). Following an introduction and description of the day's work project and some safety tips we set out to accomplish the day's mission. The original scheduled task to replace two (2) safety-cliff warning signs and install a third sign was modified to only complete the replacement of two (2) signs because a location had not been selected and necessary compliance work had not been done. The three safety-cliff warning signs were purchased by the friends to upgrade the information on the existing signs located along the roads below the caldera with a more direct (stronger) warning about the dangers along the caldera rim.

Friend Bob attaching the warning sign at the Friends Project Weekend.

Work on the first sign located on the road just below rim village turn off went quite smoothly. Safety cones were placed along the roadway, old sign removed, post painted, holes drilled, and the new sign installed. Since work on the first sign consumed the entire morning, a lunch break was taken at picnic hill.

The afternoon work began with the second sign replacement on the road near north junction. With experience gained from the morning's work we figured that the second sign replacement would be much easier - wrong. On this sign structure, one of the posts was twisted quite severely and was in close proximity to each other for proper sign alignment. This translated into moving one of the posts to achieve proper distance between the two posts. So one post was removed and several new holes were dug before proper width, orientation, depth, and alignment was achieved between the posts.

The Friends Campsite at Mazama Campground.

We were persistent but finally got the posts in the right place. Then the twisted post gave us some engineering challenges that were finally overcome with great labor and fortitude. We finally finished the replacement late in the day, called it quits and headed back to Mazama for some refreshments and another delicious meal. Good thing we modified our original plan, as we would not have had adequate time to install a third sign on Saturday. Park staff will remove the signs for the winter, stored them, and re-install them next season with new support posts.

On Sunday the project for the day was campsite and fire ring rehabilitation in the Lightning Springs back country. Dave guided us through the rehabilitation process and we completed four (4) campsites. Each site was cleaned up, ashes removed from the large fire rings (pits), melted aluminum fragments removed from the ashes, fire rings rebuilt much smaller than originally found, ashes buried, and aluminum bagged for proper disposal. Aluminum in the fire rings comes from beverage can(s) and other foiled material thrown into the camper's fire--an improper method of disposal.

Backcountry Campsite Rehabilitation.

Upon completion of the rehabilitation, Dave talked about the back county in general terms, survival techniques, and demonstrated items that he carries in his survival backpack. He discussed what to do if lost in the backcountry and emphasized using the word ³STOP² (Stop, Think, Observe, Plan).

That finished the project for the day. We hiked back to our vehicles, said our good-byes, and headed home.

All in all, a great time was had by all.

By Robert L. Marlow

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