2006 LNT Train the Trainer Annual Backpacking Trip

Four Earth Guardian volunteers (Karina O'Connor, Tony Guerra, Mike Pruente and Nancy Abodeely) combined their efforts to led this year's  group, with help from LNT Trainers Sarah and James Green and Ray Bruman.  We prepared everyone pre-trip with maps, gear lists, and warning of possible snow!  Each person was also assigned a Leave No Trace principle to teach.

The Trip - The Beginning

We picked the Cassidy Mine site for this year’s due to its historical significance. This location also gave us the opportunity to cache shade, refreshments and other items making it the most comfortable and easiest hike in BM LNT history.

We got to start out the trip with introductions and several LNT videos at the Gerlach Community Center. Here we also had a quick breakfast and our first class of the day - Plan Ahead and Prepare. After that we loaded up the vehicles and drove down the road to the 12 mile playa entrance, where we left the pavement and dropped onto the playa surface. Since the playa was still showing signs of water, we stuck close to the shoreline before arriving at the trail head. At the trail head everyone covered up before heading up the trail.

The Camp Site

This year's camp site was a short walk from the trail head. We had the advantage of walking up a truly durable surface, the road and complete our second class, "Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces" in between the trail head and the camp site.

Once everyone got settled in their tents, we began with lunch and our third class, "Dispose of Waste Properly". Dan was a standout in presentation, with props and a very interactive presentation. His talk also got us inspired to talk about many different LNT aspects of the event and the contributions which we can all make.

Day Hike

Once the day's temperatures had cooled down, we proceeded up the hill to the Cassidy mine site and activities associated with the principle Leave What You Find. The site was a great place to discuss the principle in depth since there were many aspects of the site that folks might typically not leave behind. We started with an interactive presentation which quickly demonstrated how difficult it could be for an archeologist to piece together the past when just a few pieces aren't left behind. At the mine site there were many items, such as broken glass, which hikers might associate with trash. However, on a recent prior restoration trip, the BLM NCA archeologist had identified some of the glass and cans as being over 50 years old- thus had to be left behind.

Food, Fire and Good Conversation

That evening we succeeded in out doing previous trips will an amazing dinner of not only our standards (crackers and brie) but enjoyed tequila lime marinated bobs, salmon, quinoa salad and cheesecake! Loki demonstrated camp stove use and build a warm LNT campfire in the campsite's fire ring.

Sunday Morning Hike

We started the morning with an early morning hike before the temperatures heated up. On the way to our destination we encountered an old fire ring which had sprung new plant life. In discussions among the group, we decided to 'restore' the fire ring so that anyone interested in camping on top of the ridge wouldn't be encourage to use the fire ring. Since the first talk of the day was on "Respecting WIldlife", removal of the ring from the ridge top location was a great way to get going on this topic.

The second presentation, and the last one of our trip was on "Being Considerate of Other Visitors. Metric did a fine job of getting us in the moment and got us to examine our impacts as hikers, residents of Black Rock City (on each other), Burning Man (on the local community) and on the rest of the world.

Highlights

Highlights of this year’s trip included enjoying camp shade, sharing an awesome dinner and campfire, hearing each others stories, viewing historic mining remnants, working as actors in a LNTV video and drinking frothy beverages back in Gerlach.Our annual backpacking trip has been an awesome way to meet burners from many different volunteer groups and theme camps at Burning Man and introduce them to how Leave No Trace principles apply to our event. As we incorporate our own younger Earth Guardian (Jai) into the training, we will continue to make the trip more ‘comfortable’, in hopes that more participants will feel that they are able to participate. If there are other ways (short workshops, etc) that would be more useful to Burning man volunteers and participants on evolving LNT techniques, please let our trainers know! Email us at earthguardians (at) burningman (dot) com.