Helping Hands for Mother Earth
In honor of Earth Week, Trailmothers hosted a Clean and Climb event on Saturday, April 9, at Stoney Point Park, located at the north end of Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles.
In honor of Earth Week, Trailmothers hosted a Clean and Climb event on Saturday, April 9, at Stoney Point Park, located at the north end of Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles. Around 40 community members showed up to lend helping hands for Mother Earth by cleaning up litter around the park. Trailmothers’ founder Kristen Hernandez welcomed the crowd underneath the shade of a large Oak tree and introduced Trailmothers as a community of “stewards who dedicate our lives to protecting the environment. Whether it’s public parks, hiking trails, or a crag such as Stoney Point Park, we want to continue our passion and motivate others to do the same.”
If she is not climbing or hiking at Stoney Point, Hernandez said she will visit the park to “lay on a rock like a lizard and take it all in.”
Other environmental conservation organizations were present at the event, such as We Explore Earth, It is Overdue, and Leave No Trace. They provided the crowd with informed discussions on different ways to be mindful any time they travel in nature.
After this advice, people spread throughout the local trails with protective gloves, trash bags, and grabbers. As expected, it did not take long for trash to accumulate. Glass, bottle caps, plastic wrappers, water bottles, spray cans, and batteries rattled in trashbags as volunteers hiked along the trails. Amongst the littered landscape, attendee Ted Mattison spotted a Melanistic Diamondback Rattlesnake nestled in a hole at the base of a tree. The rattlesnake is just one example of the wildlife that the trash littered across nature reserves affects.
Once everyone accumulated their gatherings at the meeting point, there was a data collection and weigh-in. Hernandez announced the total collective weight of trash to the group, amounting to 145.79 pounds. “Stoney is able to breathe again today,” she said. The Trailmothers’ next event is at the same location, Stoney Point Park, on Saturday, May 21.
