Pacific Crest Trail Work
The Summer Has Run By
Camp Honors Volunteers
Thanks to....
Notes On Horse Meadows
Adopt-A-Highway Update
The Value of Wilderness

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4-VICTOR is published by the San Gorgonio Volunteer Association, 34701 Mill Creek Road, Mentone, CA 92359. A non-profit organization in cooperation with the USDA Forest Service, San Bernardino National Forest. The goals of the partnership are to educate the public to preserve and conserve our natural resources.

4-Victor newsletter edited by Teri Cappuccio and Ann Robinson

Portions of this newsletter may have been edited to present material applicable to the general viewing public.

FALL 1999
Volume 3 - Issue 8

Services provided by the SGVA are supported by the U.S. Forest Service, your National Forest Adventure Pass, Alpine Meadows Camp and Conference Center, and public donations

Pacific Crest Trail Work
Roger Gossett - SGVA President

Due to the recent Willow Fire in our mountains, approximately 60,000 acres of Forest Service and BLM land has been closed. My understanding is that this closure is due to the danger of falling snags, downed trees across trails and roads, and also to allow teams to assess the methods to begin rehabilitation as soon as possible. This area includes many miles of the Pacific Crest Trail as it meanders down from the Arrowhead area to the Silverwood Lake area. For now, any hikers attempting this stretch of trail have to seek transportation around this area. Bill McConnel, of Big Bear, is one of our area Trail Maintenance Coordinators and oversees the Big Bear trail log. Bill and a few others have been transporting some of the hikers around this area.

Pete Fish, the PCTA Southern California Regional Trail Coordinator, is planning a work party for late winter or early spring, or whenever this area is open to the workers. If this is like most other larger scale PCTA projects, it will probably last a little over a week from Friday through the following Sunday. The goal of this work party will be to prepare the PCT for safe passage of the many thru hikers that arrive in the spring and early summer as they make their way from Mexico to Canada.

Pete and I met with the Forest Service on November 8 to further the planning process. Here are some projects that are in the planning stages:

• April 7-16 (Friday-Sunday), Willow Burn PCT Rehabilitation project. San Bernardino NF, guidebook map C 10 and 11.
• Lower Holcomb Creek and upper Deep Creek sections of the trail above Devil’s Hole. This project has not yet been approved by the Forest Service as damage assessment will not be complete until after winter storms.

If this sounds interesting to you and you wish to receive updates, let me know you might be able to help and keep this time slot open. Contact Roger Gossett at 909-797-8812 or roger@sgva.org. A refundable deposit of $25 for food is required to hold your place and is good for all other PCTA Y2K projects.

I have worked many of these projects myself and can speak from experience when I say that the camaraderie and stories told on the trail, as well as all the work that is accomplished, makes this a fun and rewarding experience. No one is expected to sign up and attend for all ten days. If they can and want to, that is great. A day, a weekend, a few days, whatever you think you might enjoy is appreciated. Oh, I might add, the food is also fantastic. You never know who might show up as a guest chef for the week.

The Summer of Bears, Mountain Lions, and Big Horn Sheep Has Run On By
John Flippin-Volunteer Coordinator

Well, another summer has gone by too fast. But it was great and the memories are wonderful. All of you working volunteers and contributing members once again enabled us to care for the forest and help visitors better understand and enjoy the very special and wonderful resources of the San Bernardino National Forest. Your service was amazing and varied as it has been for the past 18 years. Of course it is people and how well they care for others that makes any program as successful as this volunteer program has been for so many years. We've been fortunate to have very caring Forest Service personnel from the founders of our program, Dave Hood and Bob Shuker, to our current outstanding Forest Service liaison, Karen McKinley. We've also been lucky to have many dedicated volunteers stay and share their years of experience like Val and Danny Silva who just completed their 16th summer with us. What is really exciting is that we continue to have new volunteers join us every year who are at least as dedicated and caring as our veteran volunteers. As a result, your accomplishments this past summer are truly unbelievable.

This summer you donated 21,000 hours, worth about $210,000 to the Forest Service and the public. You protected and cleaned the forest, improved facilities and trails, and helped about 19,000 visitors with whom you had personal contact. Some of your major accomplishments in 1999 were:

• Removed thousands of pounds of litter from roads, trails, and camp sites
• Cleaned up 175 illegal fire rings, and prevented many more
• Presented dozens of nature walks and talks to a couple thousand visitors
• Provided lunch and fishing buddies to 153 children at the Forest Service Fish Festival
• Organized and staffed a free forest festival for over 400 visitors
• Operated the Barton Flats Visitor Center and had 8,133 visitor contacts
• Made more improvements to the new public interpretive site at Horse Meadows
• Provided complete patrol of the San Gorgonio Wilderness and surrounding areas
• Provided fishing and litter control and education along 10 miles of the Santa Ana River and 5 miles of Bear Creek
• Performed minor trail maintenance along 100 miles of trail in and around the Wilderness
• Removed a few miles of brush and 12 trees from across trails
• Patrolled and monitored mining operations in the forest
• Provided litter control along two miles of state highway through the forest
• Managed educational sales outlets in three locations on the forest
• Maintained an extensive web site containing forest information, including weather and trail conditions
• Operated and maintained a permanent work camp for all volunteers
• Provided current trail/camp conditions reports for Wilderness visitors.
• Provided over a dozen public assists to lost, injured, and/or stranded forest visitors

Well, you get the idea. Your services are amazing in quantity, quality, and variety. In recognition of your dedication, all volunteers were honored by the Forest Service at our awards ceremony on October 30. Very special awards were presented to Roger Gossett, SGVA President and assistant volunteer coordinator; Karen Saffle, Forest Festival Director; Michael Gordon, Web Site Manager (Michael could not be with us); Teddi Boston, Fish Festival Donations Manager; Cindy and Joe McGregor, Adopt-a-Highway/trail leaders; Sheila McMahon, Interpretive Programs Coordinator; Teri Cappuccio and Ann Robinson, 4-Victor Editors; Val Silva, Equestrian Coordinator; Danny Silva, Tulake Volunteer Camp Manager; Ed and Lane Lutz, Glen and Marcia Riddle, and Duane and Billie Walstead, Barton Flats Managers; and to Jan Gudgell, Pat Peters, and Jim Sirick (Jim could not be with us) for completing ten years of volunteer service. Congratulations to all volunteers for another great year!!

Alpine Meadows Camp Honors Volunteers

In appreciation for all the services provided by our volunteers, Dr. Peter Huber and Linda Crawford provided the facilities of their camp and a full sit-down dinner for the 90 volunteers who were able to attend our awards ceremony on October 30. They had also provided us with the use of their camp and two meals for our training day last May. We are very thankful for the support of Alpine Meadows Camp. It is a very good partnership that we have with Peter, Linda, and their staff as together we all help people have some wonderful experiences in the mountains.

Thanks to So. California Edison and Coca-Cola

Southern California Edison and Coca-Cola have recently made significant donations to the SGVA on behalf of volunteers David VanHorsen and Teri Cappuccio. Various companies have charitable donation programs for employees or customers volunteering with nonprofit organizations such as the SGVA. We greatly appreciate the generosity of the donating companies and the efforts of our volunteers who make such donations possible. They are all important partners in serving, protecting, and educating on the San Bernardino National Forest.

It’s been a wonderful summer at Horse Meadows with many volunteers discovering what a wonderful way it is to spend a relaxing day in the mountains. Many visitors have been able to ask questions and learn about our mountains.

October 10 was a special day for Horse Meadows. It was not only the last day for the 1999 season, but John Wegner said it looked like John Robinson’s 1923 picture of the area with swarms of young boys walking through the meadow. Dorothy and Jerry Schaper and John Wegner greeted a group of 50 Boy Scouts from Orange County. They said the boys were well behaved and even volunteered to pick up trash from a busy summer in the meadow.

We have many SGVA members eager to get back to "our" meadow next May. During the "off" season, Mickey Kacherwski will be working on new and larger display cases for next season. Several volunteers are working on special projects to go in the cases. Jane Emerson is making a chart of the birds that are actually appearing in the vicinity of the Meadow. Also being planned are a botany display and photographs of the wilderness.

SGVA will be ready for a new and better Year 2000 season!!

A very special thanks is extended to Bill Tibbitts, who came out to help me with the Adopt-a-Highway on October 2, the last trash pick-up of the year. The two of us collected three full bags of trash.

I sincerely want to thank all of you who have supported this program this year. I hope you have a great winter, and hopefully we'll see you all again next summer.

We all know the great value of designated wilderness areas. They protect important watersheds and wildlife habitat. They help clean our air. They provide a place of solitude, inspiration, and natural quiet - a means of recharging our emotional and spiritual batteries which are so quickly drained in this fast-paced industrialized society. And they help meet an increasing demand for outdoor recreation: hiking, hunting, fishing, bird watching, canoeing, camping, and many other activities. But did you know that wilderness areas also have an important and positive influence on local economies?

Paul Lorah, Professor of Geography at St. Thomas University in Minnesota, studied growth patterns in 113 western counties and found that counties with a higher percentage of wilderness have faster growth in total income, employment, per capita income, and population than counties without wilderness. Total employment in wilderness counties grew 65 percent faster than in non-wilderness counties. Also, in a University of Idaho study, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, of 2,670 people living in counties containing wilderness, a majority (53%) cited wilderness as an important reason why they moved to the county; and wilderness was cited as the reason why 45% of long-term residents stay. It is not surprising that a Vermont study found that the presence of wilderness tends to increase the value of nearby private property.

Only 30% of US Forest Service lands are still roadless and they should be designated wilderness areas. In 1997, only 3.5 percent of all timber cut in the U.S. came from national forests and only 5% of that small 3.5 percent would be affected by protecting roadless areas, according to a 1999 USFS environmental assessment. An independent poll released by the Mellman Group, Inc. in July 1999 showed that 63 percent of the public believe there are not enough wildernesses protected on national forests, versus just 6 percent who say too much is protected. The poll was commissioned by the Heritage Forests Campaign, an alliance of conservationists, educators, scientists, clergy, and ordinary citizens. The poll found that more than 70 percent of voters favor a ban on oil drilling, logging, and mining in National Forest roadless areas. Dan Beard, senior vice president of the National Audubon Society, said, "There no longer should be any doubt that protecting national forest roadless areas is good policy and good politics."

Being a wise politician, President Clinton issued an October 1999 memorandum instructing the U.S. Forest Service to issue regulations that would protect roadless areas on National Forests. The President said, "Roadless areas are a treasured inheritance, enduring remnants of an untrammeled wilderness that once stretched from ocean to ocean. Accordingly, I have determined that it is in the best interest of our Nation, and of future generations, to provide strong and lasting protection for these forests." The development of the roadless area protection regulations will include a period of public and political input. Whether they are timely, effective, and lasting remains to be seen. The Forest Service has some of the country's best and most passionate hydrologists, entomologists, recreation specialists, botanists, wilderness specialists, geologists, fire fighters, and wildlife biologists. But as said by the environmental writer, Rick Bass, "The gears and levers of the Forest Service are still pulled and fitted in Washington, in an agency run by a Congress that in turn is run not by the people but by the corporations that fund their election campaigns. We all know this. The simplicity of it makes us want to shriek. Its inevitability - the brute force, the economic biomass behind this process - also makes us want to shriek." Still the President's recent instruction to the Forest Service provides more hope. Hope that more roadless areas can be saved until more permanently protected by wilderness designation. As long as there are enough ordinary citizens with good unselfish hearts, as long as enough of those citizens are aware of the great values of wilderness for us and for our descendants, there is hope, precious hope. You volunteers keep that hope burning bright with your wonderful example of donated service. Your service to protect and maintain the wilderness and surrounding forest, to educate forest visitors, and to help visitors have safer and more enjoyable experiences, is an inspiration and great source of hope for us all.

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