Grace and the Springs Team (Tara, and Tali and myself) joined forces last week for a combined Wilderness Monitoring/spring surveying trip in the Wee Thump, South McCullough, and New York Mountains areas. These areas are surrounded by Lands with Wilderness Characteristics that we hope will one day receive Wilderness protection, so it’s important to keep track of their condition.

Grace trained the Springs Team on Wilderness Monitoring so we can check up on Wilderness areas while we’re out spring surveying on future trips. We found several places to restore habitat damage, construct vehicle barriers, and define the boundaries of growing camping areas. We even jump-started the process by installing a Wilderness boundary sign and removing about 10 lbs of trash. And of course, we took many photos of beautiful and ancient Joshua Trees.

On the Springs side of things, early this year, we broke triple digits of springs surveyed thanks to the hard work of our AmeriCorps! On this trip, we added 4 more surveys, bringing the total to 110. Surprisingly, a number of the springs we surveyed were flowing despite records that they were dry in 2011—perhaps due to the precipitation this month. We saw many birds and one thirsty cow taking advantage of the available water!

For a picture story of our adventure, visit our Flickr account here.