Spring Thing, Smith Rock State Park

This Saturday is the Spring Thing at Smith Rock State Park, that time when climbers and other volunteers give back a little to Smith Rock.

Originally I was to man the visitor center for the day, but one of the project leads cancelled so I suddenly became a project lead. I think it was a promotion.

My project will be the Rope-de-dope trail. Filling in around the washed out steps, repairing the erosion boards and generally just cleaning the trail up a bit.

The lead ranger has many, many projects going on all at the same time. A lot of the nice benches that we enjoy around Morning Glory and the Dihedrals were built in similar projects.

There will be food and auctions of donated climbing equipment in the PM.

Hit the park around 8am you will get in on the big sign event. If you come later you can still help out. All helping hands are appreciated.

Be sure and ask for the Rope-de-dope crew, after all I am pretty lazy and can use all the help I can get.

That was a lot of fun. I found out why the ranger asked me three times if I was sure I wanted to team lead the Rope-de-dope trail. It's not as glamorous as fixing the climbing trails on Morning Glory or working on Misery Ridge. Nobody signed up for it. We did finally guilt three Oregon University Students into helping, then I got people four more that signed up late.

All in all we got the work done. But I gotta tell you carrying 2 five gallon buckets of gravel down rope-de-dope to the stairs by the rock made me very tired. Particularly that third trip.

The after party was excellent. Chicken burrito's and beer. Great slide show about the work that was done and an epic mountaineering presentation. I didn't win any stuff from the raffle, but I did win an auction and some new draws for about half of retail.

I made a tactical error during the slideshows. I was parked next to the kegs of beer. Way to easy to get a refill. There was no climbing for me the next day.