Yosemite Climbers Narrative 3 Yosemite Facelift

The greater Yosemite climbing community sponsors a cleanup project called Yosemite Facelift at the end of the season where they recruit themselves and other volunteers to pick up trash in the valley and in the back country.  We ran into it by chance.  Amazing the trash that they brought back.  They displayed their trophies near the visitor's center.

As a side benefit, the organization sponsoring daycare for Yosemite workers had a food fundraiser for the Yosemite Facelift people which we took advantage of.  Had two great meals at a fraction of the cost of the restaurants.  Meals designed for rock climber's appetite.

But one morning, I thought, why not?  They were eager to sign up volunteers even if you are not a climber.  Or a wimp.  I'm sure they want to get as many volunteers as possible.  So I signed up.  The first picture shows me getting the training they gave about not picking up historical items.  I also got a water bottle, some energy bars and a pass to a National Park (in case anybody wants one).  They gave us our bags and gloves.

We went down the road to the hike to Lower Yosemite Falls.  This is a VERY easy hike.  Flat, 1 mile, it's wheel chair accessible.  But we went to look at where the falls would be if it was going and picked up trash.  Pretty picked over as you might imagine.  Like pieces of gum wrappers.  Small pieces.  Dennis shows our haul.  When we went back, they weighed it an declared that we had picked up .2 pounds of trash.  Rounding up.

Hey, we participated in Yosemite Facelift, we did it, we hiked and picked up trash.

The last picture shows some of the stuff they've picked up.  They also had a pickup truck of burned out motorcycles they got from somewhere.