Yosemite Rewards Volunteers After Its Facelift Success

Courtesy: Yosemite National Park

Yosemite, CA – One of Yosemite National Park’s largest volunteer events was held last weekend, helping to clean up the park and recognize those giving their time.

The 15th annual Yosemite Facelift, a park-wide clean up event enlisted over 2,000 volunteers that included over 400 youths. They donated more than 11,000 hours to collect garbage throughout the park, which amounted to 14,000 pounds of trash. In conjunction, the park celebrated the 9th Annual Volunteer of the Year Awards to honor outstanding volunteer contributions in nine different categories. Last year, that included a total of over 10,730 volunteers who donated over 139,500 hours to help with a wide variety of volunteer projects within the park.

The 2018 Award Recipients are:

• Doug Simmons, Preventive Search and Rescue, Individual Volunteer of the Year
• Kathy Hopkins, Yosemite Conservancy, Enduring Volunteer of the Year
• Carmel Middle School, Volunteer Group of the Year
• Golden Gate LINC Program, Youth Volunteer Group of the Year
• Katie Patrick, Yosemite Bear Management, Volunteer Supervisor of the Year
• Vegetation and Ecological Restoration, Yosemite Volunteer Program of the Year
• Sam Webster, NatureBridge Service Instructor of the Year
• Harrison Hood, Facelift Volunteer of the Year