Your Favorite Travel Spot Needs You: How to Protect the Outdoor Places We Love

Whether you’re packing up the family for a National Parks tour or getting in a historical monuments road trip, you can give your trips new meaning this summer with Team Sierra.  We love Team Sierra’s fun community of planet-lovers – they’ve come together to raise funds to benefit Sierra Club because protecting the places we live and play is so important and each of us can make a real impact when we all take action together.  Team Sierra is dedicated to protecting our public lands, making the outdoors more accessible for everyone, and helping cities commit to 100% renewable energy, and we highly encourage you to join the team!

It’s never been more important to protect our planet – more than preserving the places we love to visit, it’s also about leaving the world a better place for our children. With Team Sierra, you and the family can set up your own fundraising webpage with one of their many events or create your own campaign.  Every Team Sierra member gets 1:1 support from a professional staff member, and earns Team Sierra swag as they go! Team Sierra and Sierra Club have also proven that they know how to make an impact. As the largest environmental grassroots non-profit, Sierra Club is known for bringing people together to make real change – which is also what makes Team Sierra’s fundraising program so powerful.

Examples of family-friendly campaigns you can create:

The Outdoor Challenge

Use your family trip to challenge yourselves to explore, enjoy, and protect the beautiful places that you see.  The Outdoor Challenge is happening now and wraps up on August 10th, National S’mores Day.  Complete activities like birdwatching, beach cleanup, or hiking a new spot and raise money to earn exclusive collector’s badges that the kids can show off on their backpacks come September!

My Favorite Species

Whether you’ve got sea turtle fans or want to keep the pollinators around for the beautiful flowers, you can dedicate your fundraising to your most beloved species.*  When you pass the $39 mark, you’ll get a plush animal for the littlest, and a fun educational book about endangered species for that summer reading challenge.

My Finish Line

For many, the idea of running 13 miles is unappealing.  For parents who’ve shared a sedan with their 3 kids for the past week, the thought of stretching one’s legs in solitude for 13 miles is a dream.  Join one of Team Sierra’s race events to get those endorphins going and earn that cold beverage.

Create Your Own

Dedicate your road trip to fundraising for our planet by asking supporters for a dollar for every fun fact the kids share about the most recent pit-stop.  Turn those planet themed drawings into greeting cards and auction them off to the fans! It’ so great that there are so many non-profit fundraising ideas out there to help our planet.

By family fundraising, you’re not only giving back to Sierra Club, you’re spreading their mission to the next generation. Sierra Club Mission Statement: To explore, enjoy and protect the planet. To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth’s ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out those objectives.

How it works:

Set up your fundraising page today!

Note: Sierra Club policy dictates that fundraising pages must be created and managed by an adult 18 or over, but feel free to create a page on behalf of your family!

*My Favorite Species fundraising goes to the general mission of Sierra Club, not to a particular species.

Leave No Trace principles every family needs to know

With Earth Day coming up later this month, April is the perfect time to talk about caring for our public lands. My kids have heard the Leave No Trace mantra since early childhood, but it’s always good to brush up on best practices for preserving the wilderness we love.

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This season, Leave No Trace launches a multi-year, Leave No Trace in Every Park campaign. Subaru/Leave No Trace Traveling Trainers will be visiting ‘hot spots’ across the country (severely impacted areas), giving them attention and helping educate the public. I was lucky enough to sit down with one of them to ask top questions most families have about leaving a lesser impact on the wilderness.

Q: I am aware of the seven principles of Leave No Trace. Is there a ‘crowning’ principle in particular families would bear in mind while in the outdoors?

We encourage people to think of the cumulative impact as a crowning idea for the principles. Over one billion people visit federal and state lands each year. If one person leaves an impact such as litter, feeds wildlife, takes an item out the environment, or walks on a non-durable surface it will not impact the outdoor area significantly, but the cumulative effect of these impacts happening repeatedly over time would have a dramatic impact.

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Q: How does trail cutting or ‘bush-whacking’ hurt the wilderness environment?

We encourage people to walk in the middle of the trails even when they are muddy. If you walk around the mud you will erode the sides of the trail making it wider and you could crush vegetation on the edge of trails.

As trails widen vegetation diminishes and eventually land management agencies will have to fix the trail. Along the same lines, we encourage people to not cut switchbacks since it can result in the hillsides between the trail to erode.

If a group of people wants to hike off trail we encourage them to disperse, rather than hike in a single file. By dispersing people won’t step on the same spot, which can cause a new undesignated trail to form.

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Q: Could you describe best practices for finding a suitable campsite in backcountry situations when established sites are rare?

If established sites are rare and the land management agency does not have designated spots that are provided for campers to use we recommend the following considerations. Camp 200 feet (the equivalent to 70 adult paces and 100 kid paces) away from water, trails, and other campsites. Find the most durable surface available such as rock, sand, snow, or dry grass to camp on. If you find a site that is showing some signs of impact, such as significant soil compaction, stay there, but if it is only showing small signs of impact leave it alone for the area to recover. Move on to another more durable site that is showing no signs of impact. Bonus: dish washing tips and car camping tips!

Q: What’s the best way to completely put a fire to ash and ensure it’s safely out before leaving?

Fires are a great part of camping; they give us light, warmth, and s’mores! Making sure that we are responsible with our fires ensures safety for you, other visitors, and wildlife.

Before having a fire, ensure that they are allowed in the area you are camping in.

Ensuring that your campfire is out completely before you leave or go to bed is a very important part of camping. First, choose firewood that is no larger than your wrist as it will burn to ash more easily than larger wood. Check local firewood regulations as some areas do not allow wood not from the area to be brought in as it may harbor invasive insects.

backpacking foods for kids

Be sure to burn all wood to ash. Then, you want to guarantee your campfire is out cold. First, use plenty of water and sprinkle it over the ashes: to help the process use a stick to stir the ashes while pouring the water. If the fire area is too hot to touch, it is too hot to leave or go to bed. Bonus: how to build a mound fire.

Q: Tips for carrying out all trash? For instance, our family always unwraps food items as much as possible before departure, so there’s less trash to carry out later. 

We encourage people to take a trash bag along with all of their other essential items for any outing. Repackaging food before heading to the trail helps decrease the amount of trash you will have to pack out. We also encourage people to even pack out all food scraps. Human food is unhealthy for wildlife; they become dependent on humans for food and become attracted and conditioned to human food and trash. Which is unhealthy for both the wildlife and humans. Fruit peels can take up to 2 years to biodegrade and most are not native to the areas they are left.

We like to say, if you weren’t there would it be there?

Q: Young kids naturally enjoy making forts, rock dams, or other ‘structures’ at backcountry campsites…how can they channel this desire to create and explore in line with Leave No Trace practices?

We get this question all the time. It is important to educate children on the importance of Leave No Trace while still inspiring creativity and fostering a sense of adventure to connect kids to the outdoors. We still encourage children to play in nature and still follow Leave No Trace. Kids can still build forts or structures at campsites and then before leaving they can simply dismantle the structures.

If kids want to collect items, first make sure to check the rules and regulations of the area to make sure it is ok to collect something.

We encourage only taking one item instead of several, this generally also makes that one item more important to the child as they often attach a special memory to one item they have really given some thought to during an adventure.

Q: A nitty-gritty bathroom-related question: Leave No Trace has always stated that human waste and soap or shampoo should be 100 feet from water sources. What about rafting companies’ ‘dilution is the solution to pollution’ method? 

Usually in the backcountry, we want to be 100 feet away from any water sources, trails, and campsites when doing dishes or bathing.

However, western river corridors sometimes have different recommendations for human waste and gray water. In river corridors, the river is usually the most durable surface. The rivers in deep canyons present difficulties for the normal recommendations because you usually cannot get 100 feet for gray water or 200 feet for human waste disposal away from the water.

Leave No Trace recommends packing out all solid human waste with a reusable, washable toilet system. Always follow local regulations as some areas allow the use of bag-type systems to pack out human waste. Often, urine and strained gray water are required to be deposited directly into the river.

The old saying goes, “dilution is the solution to pollution.”

 

Thank you, LNT, for helping educate Pit Stops for Kids families!