On Saturday, May 19, a group of 12 ForestWatch volunteers spent their morning cleaning up La Cumbre Peak in the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara. In only a few hours, they were able to remove 625 pounds of trash from the area.
May Gray was in full force below, but our volunteers enjoyed a beautiful sunny day in the mountains. After meeting along East Camino Cielo Road and loading up on donuts and supplies, the group split up to find the usual trash around the peak: beer cans, broken bottles, and fast food containers. Oh, and a piano.
That’s right, last summer someone dropped a perfectly good upright piano off at the top of La Cumbre Peak. We found it still on the peak, but it was no longer upright. In fact, it was completely falling apart: the keys were mostly missing, the base could no longer hold up the rest of the piano, and the wood was covered in graffiti. In fact, people were using the piano as a source of firewood to create campfires nearby.
While it was clear the piano needed to be removed, actually doing so proved to be a challenge. Weighing approximately 500 pounds, it took at a group of seven people to haul it down to the road. As always, it ended up being no match for our awesome volunteers.
Thank you to everyone who made the trip into the mountains to help clean up La Cumbre Peak. And a big thanks to Coastal Fund for providing funding to help make this cleanup happen!
Stay tuned for a list of our summer and fall volunteer projects! If you want to sign up to receive volunteer alerts, click here.
Check out more photos from the cleanup below:
Comments are closed.