Jewel Cave Hosts Wilderness Volunteers Crew

CUSTER, SD – Jewel Cave National Monument hosted a Wilderness Volunteers team of four volunteers and two crew leaders in their Historic Area May 18-22. The team worked hard with the Jewel Cave Facilities Division to do a multitude of tasks to prepare a portion of the Canyons Trail for a new section of concrete.

Wilderness Volunteers is a 501c3 organization founded in 1997 with a mission to engage people in meaningful service that conserves and protects America's wild lands. Wilderness Volunteers organizes around 40 week-long volunteer projects each year in public lands across the country, assisting land management agencies like the National Park Service with priority maintenance work, including trail maintenance, invasive species removal, campsite rehabilitation, fencing projects, and more.

The team of six Wilderness Volunteers completed an immense amount of work during the four days on site. They sorted and moved 40 cubic yards of concrete rubble, using sledgehammers to break it into smaller pieces and remove 200 pounds of metal remesh and 60 pounds of rebar. The scrap metal was recycled, and the crushed concrete was transported to Lithograph Canyon Road where it was used as fill to repair a low area. The Jewel Cave Facilities Division used motorized buggies to move 105,000 pounds of gravel road base up to the trail, where the Wilderness Volunteers raked and leveled it to ensure a 1% drainage slope and consistent width, and then sprayed and compacted it.

By the end of the week, the team had prepared 600 feet of trail so that contractors could come in the following weeks to pour a finished concrete trail. Team members also dug out the entrances and exits of three separate culverts and placed rocks around the pipes to prevent them from clogging. On the final day, the team built a retaining wall (30 feet long, 3 feet high) to prevent erosion and damage to the newly poured trail. This retaining wall required approximately 22,500 pounds of rocks, and the removal of approximately 1 cubic yard of soil. 

The portion of the Canyons Trail that the team worked on is a very heavily traveled area in the park, as it leads from the Historic Cabin in the Historic Area to the original entrance of Jewel Cave. The path is used by hikers and runners on the Canyons Trail, and by thousands of visitors participating in Historic Lantern Tours in the summer months. The concrete previously on the path showed a great deal of wear and tear and needed removal.  New concrete will be poured and cause a brief pause in this summer’s Historic Lantern Tours from June 16 to 18. The monument is very appreciative of all the work the Wilderness Volunteers team did in preparing the path and helping to keep the Canyons Trail safe and well maintained.

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