Leave No Trace @ KISC

Greetings from snowy Kandersteg! As part of my first blog as the new ECO Assistant, I want to share about a topic very important to me from my country. In the United States, I am avid about being in and having fun in the outdoors. Over the years though, others have realized that this can cause negative impacts on the land with more and more peoples each year recreating. That is why the organization of Leave No Trace (LNT) was founded, in order to set aside principles to follow in order to encourage a proper outdoor recreational ethic. The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and LNT have a great relationship, but there is no reason why Kandersteg couldn’t also profit from the LNT Principles, since we follow them all very well anyways. What are those principles? Read ahead and find out!

1.   Plan Ahead and Prepare

·         “Be prepared” is not only the Scout motto, but also something we are very active with while running our activities.

·         Programme guides check with all crews to make sure they have all the equipment they need and that they don’t, be it a hiking, climbing or skiing!

·         Our upperhut in the Ueschental already has warm army blankets, so no need to bring weighty and wasteful sleeping bags.

 2.   Travel And Camp on Durable Surfaces

·         When hiking, we always stick to the well marked Wanderwegs and Bergwandern of the Swiss Alps.

·         Not only do we have well marked campsites (over
     60 of them!) we also have two alpine huts (Gfellalp and Ueschinenhütte) to concentrated our impact in a small area.

·         Winter allow us to travel on snow, but we still stick to the main valley for most of our activities to limit or affect on rock fall or avalanches.

                                                                                

 3. Disposal of Waste Properly

·         Mini-Recycling centres are placed on each floor of our chalets and huts to encourage all guests to recycling and think of their waste.

·         We recycle PETE bottles, paper, plastics, wood, metal, and aluminium cans at the centre, with assistance from the local recycling centre in the village.

·         Even in office, we recycle old paper in our printers, making no recycling task too big or small to do!

4.   Leave What You Find

·         Switzerland is full of flora, but we encourage guest to take pictures of the wildflowers rather than pick them.

·         The mountains are also full of old huts and some ruins. We explore these safely with the Scouts but also tell them to be careful of their impact.

·         Sometimes we must clean up what we find. Kate, our Assistant House Manager from Australia, introduced to us Pick 3. It is a program that tells recreationalists to clean up 3 pieces of litter per person while hiking, something easily incorrigible to all guests.

5.   Minimize Campfire Impacts

·         In our Campsite, we strongy support groups to bring stoves to cook meals. Additionally, fire barrels are located at our upper huts to limit scaring of soil and plant life.

·         The wood burner in the Chalet generates most of our heat in the summer and winter seasons. The wood sources comes locally from our own woods, which has been downed and dried.

·         Ashes are collected from our campfires in the summer and winter. 

6.   Respect Wildlife

·         Majestic animals like Steinbeck and local farm animals like Swiss cows can be found all around the mountainsides. We remind guest to be respectful ad keep our distance to these animals both wild and domesticated.

·        Dries, our Ground Manager from the Netherlands, has checked with local wildlife authorities with ways to encourage Red Deer further up in the mountains. Being a beekeeper at home, he also is investigating ways of encouraging insects and avian life to our end of the valley.

7.   Be Considerate of Other Visitors.

·         On and off the trail, KISC is thinking of others. While hiking, we also let other non-scouts have the right of way.

·         International friendship is one of the cornerstones of the Programme Department. Weekly campfires, International activities and workshops are just some of the ways we encourage the mixing of thoughts and cultures from Scouting the world over.

·         Lastly, we think of our favourite local village, Kandersteg. A chalet and campsite wide quiet time of 10:30 PM happens nightly, to give everyone a restful night sleep.

Leave No Trace not only introduces new concepts to explore but also reinforces already existing positive ones. I hope to encourage all my fellow staff, Scouts, and guest to recreate responsible all the while exploring the wonders of the Swiss Alps.

Interested? More info can be found at Leave No Trace’s website.
 
Tad (US)

ECO Assistant

The Kander: The River That Flows Uphill

Two years ago, we wrote about the chameleon-like river on our doorstep: the Kander. Depending on the weather in Gasteretal and what kind of rock the Kanderfirn glacier has recently ground up, the river changes from brown to blue to green to colourless.

But I have noticed another peculiar thing about the Kander, it flows uphill. Not the whole river, but certain parts of it, and only in certain places. If you have visited us you must have seen one of those places, in the river bend underneath the bridge.

Figure 1: Point bar in the Kander

The little “beach” in the picture above, called a point bar, was a lot smaller half a year ago (And it was not because of higher water levels). Over the course of the summer underwater currents in the river deposited more and more sand and gravel in the inside of the river bend.

The way this works is that because of the water flow through the bend the water pressure in the outside of the bend is higher than on the inside of the bend. This difference causes water at the bottom of the river to flow from the outside to the inside of the bend, (uphill!) as shown in the sketch.

The way this works is that because of the water flow through the bend the water pressure in the outside of the bend is higher than on the inside of the bend. This difference causes water at the bottom of the river to flow from the outside to the inside of the bend, uphill (!), as shown in the sketch.

Figure 2: Secondary flow

As the water flows uphill, it moves sand, gravel and rocks across the river, creating the point bar. You can see this for yourself when you put a lot of sugar in your tea and start stirring it: the sugar moves to the middle of the cup.

This underwater current is called the secondary flow. It’s a funny coincidence that the first to describe this process was Albert Einstein. Okay, maybe that’s not so funny, but it’s small and slow processes like this that make rivers define or even create entire landscapes with their meanders, like the Argentinian Río Negro and U.S. Colorado River pictured below.

Stay tuned for more posts about the Kander in the near future!

Dries (NL)

 

Figure 3: Rio Negro, Argentina (all the curves are routes the river took in the past, sometimes leaving a lake behind)

 

Figure 4: Colorado River, U.S. (“locked” meanders; weird colours showing different geological layers)

Dries (NL)
Grounds Manager