Climbers Cleaning Up Obed River Park

Hundreds of volunteers are visiting the Obed Wild and Scenic River on Saturday for the park’s annual Adopt-A-Crag event.

Obed Wild and Scenic River Chief Ranger Matt Hudson said the event provides an opportunity for climbers to give back to the park by helping clean it up. Hudson said volunteers will be able to choose from a number of different projects they have planned for the day.

“We’ve managed to continue to foster that,” Hudson said. “We view our climbers as responsible stewards and work closely with them and so this event in a lot of ways is just kind of a reaffirmation of that close relationship that we have between our climbing community and the park service.”

Hudson said one of the projects will be building water bars to control water runoff and pick up litter. Hudson said their work will improve the overall climbing experience which has been a big motivator for climbers to help out.

“People don’t always behave as they should in the park,” Hudson said. “So we get litter and things like that, so it’s a big job for park staff to pick up all the litter. We pick it up on a daily basis but there are places that can accumulate over the years.”

Hudson said climbers have helped by climbing down steep banks to pick up trash in areas that are hard to get to.

“We have really cleaned up a lot of these places where historically maybe they were not as well taken care of,” Hudson said.

The event will begin at 10:00am Saturday, September 14th. Volunteers will meet at the Lily Pad Campground which is adjacent to the park.