It's that time of year again...chillier temperatures, crisp, colored leaves, bugling bulls and yes, fantastic field trips. Lots and lots of fantastic field trips to unique rivers with even more unique students from around the Upper Clark Fork basin. The sun has peaked over the ridge on yet another CFWEP school year...
Blackfoot Youth Field Day
Go Big, or Go Home. Why not? Let's kick the year off with a 115 fourth through sixth graders from Bonner, Lincoln, Potomac, Helmville, Ovando. That's exactly how we began this field season, and the only thing bigger than the group size was the amount of fun had by all. CFWEP teamed up with the Blackfoot Challenge, Bureau of Land Management and our friends in Missoula, the Watershed Education Network (WEN) to put on the Challenge's annual Blackfoot Youth Field Day at Garnet Ghost Town. We took the lead on the day's content as the theme was "All Things Mining."
Garnet Ghost Town History, historic mining practices, gold panning, mineralogy, stream monitoring and restoration barely scratch the surface of the six station topics that all of the kids and their teachers were treated to on September 12th. A super-hearty thanks go out to Dick Fichtler and Alan Mathews of the BLM, as well as all their staff and to the Challenge's Megan Gale who hosted the event and helped plenty in the planning. Also to NRDP's Greg Mullen; Josh Gubits & Co. from WEN; Gold panner extraordinaire, Ralph Smith and his merry gang; Ginette Abdo from the Mineral Museum; our former, yet not too distant in the least CFWEP leader Colleen Elliott, now of the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, and last but not least, CFWEP staffers Jen Titus and Justin Ringsak. We'll have lots of photos from this trip and others up soon, so make sure you check back!
Garnet Ghost Town History, historic mining practices, gold panning, mineralogy, stream monitoring and restoration barely scratch the surface of the six station topics that all of the kids and their teachers were treated to on September 12th. A super-hearty thanks go out to Dick Fichtler and Alan Mathews of the BLM, as well as all their staff and to the Challenge's Megan Gale who hosted the event and helped plenty in the planning. Also to NRDP's Greg Mullen; Josh Gubits & Co. from WEN; Gold panner extraordinaire, Ralph Smith and his merry gang; Ginette Abdo from the Mineral Museum; our former, yet not too distant in the least CFWEP leader Colleen Elliott, now of the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, and last but not least, CFWEP staffers Jen Titus and Justin Ringsak. We'll have lots of photos from this trip and others up soon, so make sure you check back!
Drummond High and Junior High School
Our first standard five-day school stop was on September 20th with Darcy Schindler's 10th and 7th grade classes. Chad Okrusch, The Mining City's answer to James Taylor, Dave Hughes, plus John Dewey, joined the CFWEP staff in favor over working on his dissertation last Thursday to run the macroinvertebrate sampling station. Mr. Schindler's kids were on the case in fine fashion, figuring out the differences in water chemistry, bug populations and vegetation on the Clark Fork as one heads down stream. First stop was on the river near Garrison, just above its confluence with the Little Blackfoot. The second stop was right in the heart of Trojan Country at the Drummond City Park. Many thanks to the Rock Creek Cattle Company for generously allowing access for the area's kids to learn more about their watershed.
Coming up...
DIVIDES AND WATERSHEDS,
Friday, October 5th and Saturday, October 6th.
Best get to the Museum of Fine Arts Butte next weekend! Check out the program line-up here http://www.cfwep.org/divides.html and BE THERE! Too many cool things to list AND...IT'S FREE!!! Bring the family and enjoy some Clark Fork culture!
Other Field Trips coming up...
- Butte Central, Misti Cunningham's freshman biology classes, October 2
- Anaconda High School, Kate McElroy and Bob Tarkalson's Advanced Biology Classes, Milltown Dam Education Program tour with WEN, October 3
- Butte High, Bill Callaghan's Environmental Biology Class, October 9th
Drop us a line at cfwep@mtech.edu or give us a ring 406-496-4832 if you'd like to volunteer or come observe a field trip!
