A Busy Autumn: Program Updates for Fall 2021
With back-to-back trips and events, the CCA Team has stayed busy this fall connecting kids and adults to the landscape of the National Conservation Areas. From river trips to stewardship events, we're proud of the impact we continue to make, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Read more below!
River Programs
Although the river slows down this time of year, our River Team keeps on moving! In partnership with The Nature Connection, CCA got over 250 9th graders from the Delta County School District on the river over the course of 14 trips. Students joined us for day-long floats down the Gunnison River to learn about the watershed, ecology, and history of Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area - and to spend quality time in the outdoors with their fellow classmates. The trips have been a blast!
Adults have gotten to enjoy our local rivers, too. We led our annual Eagle Rock Shelter Float Trip with CMU professor, Dr. John Seebach. As always, Dr. Seebach’s expert knowledge gave participants a look into the rich indigenous history of Gunnison Gorge’s landscape. Still ahead, CMU Outdoor Recreation students will be joining us at our Catalpa Camp along Ruby-Horsethief. Students will gain relevant, field-based experience to connect leadership, place-based learning, and team management in the context of outdoor programming.
As the weather cools down and the first frost hits, the tents at our Catalpa Camp will be taken down for the winter. Our fall programs are a great good-bye to a fantastic river season. We’ll look forward to the river rising again in the spring! Thanks to CCA’s dedicated river crew and partners for making it happen.
Land Programs
Over on the land, we’ve been very busy with a variety of volunteer events. Starting in September, we have been hosting sagebrush planting days in the Sieber Fire burn site within McInnis Canyons NCA. From the seeds collected from volunteers last year, we have thousands of sagebrush seedlings that will be returned to the landscape this fall. We also hosted two National Public Lands Day events, one in Dominguez-Escalante and one in Gunnison Gorge. Volunteers came together to help improve the habitat of each landscape. To tackle an even larger area, a group of 6 volunteers joined CCA and the BLM for an overnight backpacking trip and clean-up within the Dominguez Canyon Wilderness Area; 25 fire rings were removed and bags of trash were collected. We thank the dedicated volunteers who have given hundreds of hours of their time to steward public lands. We have several more events planned for October and November, so make sure to check out how you can get involved.
With several of our keystone education events planned this fall, we were excited to get hundreds of kids out on the land for hands-on, interactive field trips. Unfortunately, our programs continue to be affected due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The week before our signature Cottonwood Days event was scheduled to happen, we had to cancel the program due to updated group size restrictions. Luckily, we have continued to engage with kids during stand-alone, small group events and are looking forward for more to come this month.
We are also looking forward to hosting a Leave No Trace Trainers course later this month. With funding from the Western Colorado Community Foundation, we are able to invite other educators from the Grand Valley to receive their LNT trainer status through this course. We look forward to sharing more about this event with you next month!
Thank you to all who continue to support our programs and organization - we could not make this successful fall season happen without YOUR support!