by Kyle Macdonald
Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT)
Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT), a new Earth Island project, has a simple mission: Provide Bay Area youth service agencies with professional wilderness-leadership training and quality outdoor equipment, so adults can safely lead youth in exploring the power and beauty of California's wilderness. Our long-term goals are to help diversify the environmental education community and to promote conservation, preservation, and restoration. We feel that to see conservation of the natural world as valuable, people must connect with the natural world. BAWT facilitates that connection.
We began this facilitation in May with our first Wilderness Leadership Training (WLT). The WLT is our cornerstone five-day intensive backpacking course. When they complete the course participants have access to our gear loan system, so they can take young people outdoors.
We began the course with a Saturday morning four-hour meeting. Seven youth workers from agencies in San Jose, Oakland, Marin, and Berkeley arrived with trepidation and eagerness. Highlights included an inspirational testimonial of a backpacking youth worker by Steering Committee member Sam Collins; a slide show that gave participants a picture of what to expect; and finally the distribution of our virgin REI gear, which brought great excitement to participants and staff.
By 8:00 a.m. Wednesday we were on the road headed east toward Yosemite National Park's Hetch Hetchy Valley. Hetch Hetchy is the site of O'Shaughnessy Dam (completed in 1920) and an 8-mile-long reservoir holding San Francisco's water supply. We found it hard not to wonder what this very clearly human-made lake's site had looked like before the dam and reservoir. If David Brower has his way, maybe we'll all get a chance to see.
At the backpackers' campground we repackaged food with lots of ziplocks and set up camp. Tent setup, stoves, food, and drink were all covered before nightfall. We chose the first of our leaders. Two participants would get us out of our sleeping bags and through lunch. After a 20-minute processing session the next pair would take us into camp and through dinner. New leaders would be told where we were going and given maps, and the cycle would begin again. This process proved extremely useful to participants as an opportunity to assess their own leadership skills and receive feedback from the rest of the group.
The next four days on the trail led us through an incredible variety of ecosystems and offered us difficult challenges and incredible rewards. We had a very wet, cold Wapama Falls crossing on our first day out. Although we all got soaked crossing the bridges under the falls, Raul and Georgia took great care and made good decisions that put us on dry land in top shape.
That early morning navigational difficulty was a great learning experience for the leaders, Kathy and Vincente. By 1:00 p.m. that day, we were eating lunch in Till Till Valley, a beautiful meadow bordered with aspen groves and granite walls, with not another soul around.
As we reached the top of our day two climb, climbing 1500 feet in five miles, we hit snow and immediately saw some big bear tracks. We quickly found a place to set up camp and, with those big brown furry animals in mind, we made a great supper.
Our fifth and final day was beautiful. Yellow columbines and lupines lined the trail. Just before our arrival at Wapama Falls, we spaced ourselves along the trail to guarantee each of us a little solo time. This is when Raul received his Yosemite gift. "You'll never guess what I just saw!" he said when he rejoined the group. "A brown bear!" He had met the eyes of a black bear (with brown fur) crossing the trail 20 feet in front of him. He was thrilled.
During my brief solo time, the silence left me with the wind and occasional crackle of brush from birds and lizards in nearby manzanita and oak. I reflected on how difficult but rewarding a trip like this can be for youth.
Vincente gave us a saying that remained a source of strength and inspiration. "En La Kech" he explained, means "You are my other me" in Aztec. This embodies the type of teamwork and camaraderie that BAWT is hoping to inspire. And on this trip, we did just that.
Kyle Macdonald is Project Coordinator of Bay Area Wilderness Training.
Help get urban youth outdoors! Contact BAWT for more info on how to volunteer with curriculum development, fundraising, as a field researcher or an outreach assistant. Call (415) 788-3666 x125 or e-mail info@bawt.org. You can register for BAWT workshops and get the latest trip reports online at <http://www.bawt.org>.
En la kech! Teamwork and camaraderie