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About 4,000 volunteer hours have been put in since August, when 12 inches of rain severely damaged the park, causing 100-foot long landslides, wiping out bridges and trails, and rerouting the Whitewater River.
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Wayne Britson of Rochester, left, and other volunteers work to clear and level a walking trail at the Whitewater State Park Saturday near Altura, Minn. (Photo by Andrew Link/Winona Daily News) |
The park closed, and parts of it are just beginning to reopen.
On April 1, hiking trails began to reopen. This brought in a new batch of volunteers not only eager to use the park’s trails, streams and campsites, but eager to get more areas ready to use.
Michelle Baines and her family did just that. They traded in their hiking boots for work boots Saturday for the cleanup, among dozens of other groups — families, service organizations, church groups and more.
“Down by the river is where it’s really bad,” Baines said as she cleared rocks from a section of the Dakota Trail by the group camp area.
Baines and her daughters Rhianna, 12, and Rachel, 18, have been hiking at the park for about nine years, and they notice every little change to the trails.
But nothing could compare to the changes brought by the August rain, as the river dug new paths, and old paths completely vanished.
“It happened so quick,” Baines said, adding that seeing the damage up close was much more powerful than looking at photos.
“If you stand (by the river) and see how little you are compared to these trees that have been uprooted … it makes you feel pretty small.”
Some of the debris piles are 15 feet tall. Most piles will be removed, but some are going to be left alone to show the power a flood can have over nature. This impact will be described in so many words on a posted sign the park will put up near the uncleared piles.
While most of the picnic areas and trails are back to normal with the help of volunteers, the “big projects” will be contracted work that will begin this summer, park naturalist Dave Palmquist said.
“There’s so many ways to measure it,” Palmquist said. Whether measured in dollars and cents, in labor hours or in magnitude of project, the damage is overwhelming, he said.
Carol Breen, a volunteer on Saturday and frequent camper, stopped to look around at the uprooted trees, debris piles and deep cavities carved by nature. Shovel in hand, she said, “Look at all this. Where do you start?”
One place to start is with two feet on the ground, one foot in front of the other. Palmquist and volunteer Andrew Dean created a new trail in this way.
With Dean walking one way and Palmquist walking another, they decided which route was the easiest and most natural to walk. They used orange tape to flag this new course, while other volunteers cleared rocks and branches, trimmed vegetation, and made their footprints known to future hikers.
Dean and his family camps regularly at Whitewater. In May, he will hold his bachelor party there.
“This is how the valley was created,” Dean said of the newly created paths. “You really wonder how a river can do it. Then you see this.”
TO VOLUNTEER
Whitewater State Park will have another volunteer cleanup from 9 a.m. to noon on May 17. Call 507-932-3007, ext. 0, to sign up.
