2008 LNT - Leave No Trace Annual Backpacking Trip

In this year's trip we revisited an old trip route in the Calicos and went back to basics.   We prepared everyone pre-trip with maps, gear lists, and warning of possible cold!  Each person was assigned a Leave No Trace principle to teach and asked to talk about how it applied at Burning Man.

| See All Photos | Video |

The Trip - The Beginning

We picked the Calicos for this year’s trip due to its beauty and accessability. This location also gave us the opportunity to cache shade, refreshments and other items making it a remote, yet comfortable trip.

We started the trip with introductions and several LNT videos at the BLM House in Gerlach. Here we also had a quick breakfast and our first class of the day - Plan Ahead and Prepare. Scott, with help from our LNT masters, gave a great class, which included fun games like popcorn- which kept us on our toes with reminders on many items that we needed to include in our pre-trip preparations. After that we loaded up the vehicles and drove down the road to Soldier Meadow's road, the unpaved route to our trail head by Morman Dan Peak.

We had several stops on the way to the site. Our first stop was an an overlook of hualipai playa, the Burning Man site which inspired the first trash fence. After that, we stopped at a couple of places along to road to see restoration sites where roads have been reclaimed by nature, thanks to a few hours of volunteer efforts.After the teachable moments, we headed back in to the vehicles to drive to the trail head. At the trail head we had yet another teachable moment, not due to the location, but due to the needs of everyone to take a quick pee. Terry poined out the consequences of peeing on local bushes which can create salf licks for local analimals, like the antelope we'd just seen from the vehicles.

The Camp Site

This year's camp site was a short walk from the trail head, so short that many of us, like our fearlesss trip leader, Canyon - shown in the photo above, loaded up to make camp truely comfortable. We had the advantage of walking up a truly durable surface, the road, for starting our second class, "Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces" in between the trail head and the camp site.

The campsite (see top of page) had an awesome large surface area with desert pavement which offered many tent sites with minimal disturbance. Once everyone got settled with their tents, we contined with our class on "Dispose of Waste Properly". Terry's talk covered all aspects of disposal, an import topic for both wilderness camping and Burnng Man. His talk also got us inspired to talk about many different aspects of the event and the contributions which we can all make.

Afteroon Hike

Once the day's temperatures had cooled down, we went on a hike and had our third class, Leave What You Find. During her talk, Angela gave a different spin on the topic, focusing our thoughts on impacts that things that we take may have on local critters. Each of us had cards with our critters on it and we acted out our dilema when others intruded and took what seems to be a small, but often critical part of our habitat.

That evening we shared wine, beers, chips and salsa, bree and smoked salmon, and chocolate and before we knew it, it was getting dark. THen oour inner burners came our for the class on the fourth principle, minimize campfire impacts. For this class, Firehorse and Larry set up a mound fires. She also got us into a disucssion about fire ring set up by prior campers to discuss when to leave and when to dismantle fire rings.

Sunday Morning Hikes and Home and Gareden Tour

Another beautiful day in the Calicos greeted us Sunday morning and the smell of bacon was in the air. While we were waking coffee and breakfast, Jai helped Mattie prepare for her principle, Respect Wildlife. Before it good too warm, everyone took down their tents and naturalized their sites to prepare for the home and garden tour of the camp site later. Thanks to the good camp site and our camper's efforts, it was quite difficult to locate the exact location of their tents!

Then the group connected with a last group hike before the temperatures heated up. We headed down t the dry creek bed for Natile's talk on Respecting Wildlife. Following Natalie's directions, after her talk we walked further up the canyon and watched for signs of local wildlife as we proceeded up the wash. We saw lizards, heard various birds, saw many flowers and imagined appearances of horses and other local creatures based on sightings of scat around the trail and back at camp.

The next presentation that morning, back at the camp site, was by Bob on "Being Considerate of Other Visitors. We had a group discussion of many different aspects of how this applies to BurningMan. We had many shared experiences where the principle could have come into play.

Highlights

Highlights of this year’s trip included being back in the Calicos, enjoying great hikes, sharing an awesome happy hour, dinner and campfire, hearing each others experiences, and drinking frothy beveragesabd salty snacks back at the trail head and at our favorite find, Black Rock Pizza in Sparks. 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 and Greening concepts apply to our event. As we incorporate our own younger Earth Guardian (Jai) into the training, we will continue to make the trip more family friendly and comfortable, in hopes that more participants will feel that they are able to participate. Next year we are even considering locations close to the Bay Area. 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 lnt @ burningman (dot) com. See our new class of crazy trainers below!