Several days each year I use my Dell volunteer days to monitor wilderness trails in the White Mountain National Forest of New Hampshire. In recent years I've written about this volunteer opportunity.
On July 26 I monitored Stairs Mountain, which is located in the Presidential-Dry River Wilderness (just south of Mount Washington, New Hampshire's tallest mountain).
There are six wilderness areas in the White Mountains and each part of a wilderness area is classified into Zones A-D, with Zone A being the most remote (500 or more feet from any trail) and Zone D described as areas within 1/4 mile of developed facilities or within 500 feet of high-use trails. A good definition of the zones can be found here. The zone designations for the Presidential-Dry River Wilderness are highlighted below, and I placed a blue "X" on the location of Stairs Mountain within that wilderness.
The maps depicting each zone can be found here.
The task is simple: count how many people show up at the monitoring location between the hours of 11AM-3PM. During my monitoring experience, I counted four people, and I reported this data to the local USFS office, which in turn will report it to the national office.
One of my visitors was an actual USFS forest ranger who mentioned that when a volunteer offers to perform Wilderness Monitoring the forest rangers are free to manage other areas of the forest (as opposed to staying in the same location for four hours).
Stairs Mountain is a beautiful spot! I decided to hike up the night before my monitoring duties began. I've embedded some of the better photos of my trip below. The following week I monitored two different locations and I hope to write those up soon.
Steve