Remillard Park is one of the smaller “rock parks” in the Berkeley Hills, and it surprisingly has some fun climbs – especially if you are looking for a relaxing afternoon of casual top roping with some great friends in a beautiful park. Some folks even highball/free solo the climbs if you are of that mindset.
The amazing folks at CLIF Bar have been long-time supporters of the Access Fund and the traveling Conservation Team. One of the things (there are many) that I love about CLIF Bar is that the organizational culture there is reflected in every employee I have met – it isn’t just a poster or a slogan. A great example of this is Nikki Ferenz. She approached the Bay Area Climbers Coalition about doing a volunteer stewardship day with her team to support a local crag and she was very clear that they wanted to do some real work, not just trash pick-up.
Not a problem at all!
While clearing out all the broken glass and trash around the park isn’t super fun, we needed to get it done before we cleared all of the downed vegetation off the trails and slopes. Overall, we collected about 60 pounds of trash and broken glass.
After that was done, we cleared all the debris off the trail around the park PLUS cleared out a huge “nest” of downed tree limbs, branches, and leaves that was clogging up a huge hillside. Check out the before and after photos plus the final pile of debris cleared.
Before photo of the main part of the trail:
After photo of the main part of the trail:
Pile of debris – roughly 6 cubic yards!
There is still a lot of work to do at this park, but we were able to tackle the major issues to ensure the park is accessible to all users within the community, including climbers. A huge thank you to Nikki and her team from CLIF Bar and Pam Boland from the City of Berkeley Parks department for being super amazing and supporting our local crags!