On Thursday, September 21st, a crew of five volunteers from REI joined Friends of Nevada Wilderness’ Forest Project Coordinator Angie Dykema for a road closure project in the north section of the Mt. Rose Wilderness. The project entailed blocking off a vehicle intrusion extending from Forest Service Rd. 462C past the western boundary of the North Mt. Rose Wilderness and well into the wilderness area.The crew noted the remains of a destroyed Forest Service carsonite sign at the entrance of the illegal road and replaced it with a new sign which clearly designates the wilderness boundary and displays “no motorized vehicles.” The crew then went to work rolling boulders and large logs into the two-track in order to block off access by off-road vehicles. Because the intrusion has occurred in a place where there is not much material available for revegging, the volunteers had to focus mostly on placing obstacles in the path to discourage future access.
The hard work of the volunteers paid off by the end of the day, when the two-track was so blocked off by logs and boulders and minimal vegetation that it was almost impossible to walk down. The crew successfully blocked all the visible portions of the intrusion, and all in all stopped access on about a half mile of the route. Motorized vehicles will be discouraged from trying to drive down this route again, and the wilderness will be left to heal from the motorized scar.*There was a total of 51 volunteer hours recorded for this project.
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