In continued honor of National Public Lands Day, Positional Projects held their 8th annual clean-up of Giant Rock, the popular historic rock formation in Landers last Saturday.
In collaboration with Bighorn Desert View Water Agency, Blightsites, Desert Cleanse Project, Element Society, High Desert Keepers, The Landers Community Association, Mojave Desert Land Trust, and ReFuel Your Fun, Positional Projects founder Karyl “Kaz” Newman told Z1077 this year’s effort was the largest one yet. With over 125 RSVPs, Newman had to refresh their website three times to accommodate the overwhelming response.
When asked if there’s been any incremental improvement over the year with Giant Rock’s chronic litter and vandalism, Newman said:
“There are less big trash items, less trigger trash items that have been shot (from guns) but there’s still all the fireworks, rubble left behind, the campfires with the pallet nails—that’s what a lot of people are working on, making sure these vehicles are protected from the vulnerability of driving over where all those nails are stuck in the sand—that’s what we’re using the magnet sweepers for. Of course, there’s smashed beverage glass—all in the foothills of Spy Mountain here there’s a lot of people using pickers to pick up trash. But there wasn’t anything huge left behind, and that was really nice to see.”
Newman mentioned that there has been far more graffiti, a problem that has seen an uptick since the pandemic
“The tags aren’t as big, I will say that. The character who is a repeat visitor, we’ve got multiple tags by him, but they’re smaller. We did the clean-up a year ago, and then six weeks later, he did a smaller tag over where his old one was. It is a battle.”
The good news is that organizers had more gear for the graffiti removal this year with equipment donated from Yucca Valley’s KK Rents, and huge donation from Landers Community Association so they were able to buy more “Elephant Snot,” the chemical spray used to remove graffiti.
In true community effort, there were more donations from local businesses to keep volunteers going throughout the day: large pies from Lander’s own Five Dollar Pizza, salad and Kind Bars from Yucca Valley’s Grocery Outlet; plus, free National Public Land Day T-shirts from the Bureau of Land Management, and refillable propane canisters provided by ReFuel Your Fun.
