Mountain Hardwear Gives Back: Angel Island (Hardwear Sessions)

By Alex Baires, Mountain Hardwear Design Team

Thanks in part to the Mountain Hardwear Gives Back program we continued our partnership with REI Berkeley (San Francisco and Corte Madera stores also joined in) and Clif Bar & Company on June 18, 2008 with a project on Angel Island. REI Berkeley's Amber Hoffmann (Outreach Specialist) as well as Clif Bar & Company's Patrick Bush and Amy Guittard were responsible for organizing and making this project a success. The night before the project, several volunteers camped on Angel Island and we spent an absolutely beautiful night on the island before getting down and dirty with the service project the following day.

When it was all said and done, Mountain Hardwear had 22% of our entire staff volunteering on this project with nearly every department being represented. Even our executive team got in the act with 4 out of 5 executives joining in and getting their hands (and everything else) dirty.

View photographs from our Angel Island event.

Amber Hoffman, of REI Berkeley, contributed the following write-up:

Wow, what an amazing project we had on Angel Island!

A total of 131 volunteers worked on the project from all three companies. We had 73 volunteers from Clif Bar and Company (including many of the company's sales force), 34 volunteers from REI, and 24 volunteers from Mountain Hardwear.

We had over 40 volunteers camping overnight from REI Berkeley, San Francisco, Corte Madera, Mountain Hardwear and Clif Bar & Company. That was truly a treat camping with so many amazing people on such a scenic island. Many folks took hikes around the island, and watched the sunset and moonrise (simultaneously) from the top of Mt. Livermore.

In the morning, we had over 80 additional volunteers join us from the ferry, and we descended upon the project site like locusts. Volunteers worked at the East Garrison site removing overgrowth around the historic Mess Hall, which hadn't been attended to in over 40 years. Ranger Gerald said they found staircases they never knew existed, and head Ranger Supervisor Dave Matthews said it had not looked so nice since General McDowell was in resident (the fort is named after him). The ranger staff was incredibly impressed by the work of our volunteers, and welcomed us back with open arms at any time. Our volunteerism was a huge impact for them, considering their team of four full time rangers to maintain the whole entire island.

A big thank you goes to all of the ranger staff who worked with our volunteers, keeping them on task, busy, and safe. It was wonderful to also hear tidbits of history from them. A huge thank you to Mountain Hardwear for organizing the delicious BBQ and cooking, a huge thank you to Clif Bar Co. for organizing the ferry and making a donation out of their foundation, and a thank you to each of the three REI stores for keeping the volunteers informed and sending them out. This was definitely a team effort from all three companies, and I think we were very successful.

Although this project involved immense planning and coordinating, the phenomenal results and excitement of the volunteers was worth it, and worth having another opportunity like this in the future.