Leader Training Course, Lizard Head Wilderness, CO

Dates

Jul 25th - Jul 31st 2010

Service Project

Trail maintenance

Free Days

Day hikes to area peaks, fishing, photography, bathing, relaxing.

Accommodations

Backpack camping

Trip Rating

Strenuous : 4 mile backpack, digging, bending, lifting. Pack animal supported.

Leaders

Deborah Northcutt
Dave Pacheco
Bill Sheppard

Equipment

Lizard Head Wilderness is a land of ragged mountain splendor, with lovely cirque lakes, fish living in swift mountain streams that often plunge over dramatic waterfalls, and a spruce-fir forest opened by expanses of alpine vegetation. Magnificent tracts of aspen blanket the lower slopes in vast unbroken reaches. The Lizard Head Wilderness consists of 41,193 acres lying astride the spectacular San Miguel Mountains, (10 miles southwest of Telluride and 40 miles northeast of Cortez) on the Uncompahgre and San Juan National Forests. Three "fourteeners" with elevations all above 14,000', Wilson Peak, Mt Wilson, and El Diente are located within the wilderness.

Our Lizard Head Wilderness project is our Leader Training Course for 2010. If you're interested in becoming a Wilderness Volunteer leader, you are encouraged to attend this special training. The training will include discussion of leadership topics and a Leave No Trace Trainers Course. We are looking for folks with people skills who are confident and confident in back country settings, have a commitment to wild places and significant camping/backpacking experience, and invite qualified individuals to join our extremely talented volunteer staff in Giving Something Back. Participants who successfully complete the Leader Training Course will be refunded the fee for the training after they successfully complete this training and subsequently co-lead a service project.

The service project involves a backpack approximately 4 miles into the Lizard Head Wilderness where we'll set up a basecamp around 10,500'. Our work is trail maintenance including tread work, installation of confidence markers and some trail rehabilitation on one of three popular trails in the area. The San Juan National Forest will supply pack support to carry the tools, food and commissary gear to camp.