Barbara Lawlor, Nederland.  For a few weeks every spring, frog songs can be heard croaking from snow-melt, muddy ponds formed in ditches and swampy areas in the mountains. On Saturday morning, volunteers from the USFS and the Peak to Peak Forest Watch rested their shovels and listened to the wet sound.

The group had gathered at the West Magnolia Campground to participate in the annual fire mitigation event in which they searched for illegal campfire pits which had been built in non-designated campsites.

The also dug out pits that had become too large and rebuilt the sites within fire safety limits.

United States Forest Service Recreation Program Manager Matt Henry was on scene to supervise the volunteers. He looked around the area and said it was the cleanest he has ever seen it at this time of year. Just days before they arrived, a crew from the Boulder County Jail had scoured the area, picking up debris.

Now, it was up to the volunteers to make the campsites safer.

“We found a path leading into an aspen stand where someone had painted the trees with various colors. We couldn’t get the paint off. There was also a structure that seemed to be a sacred worship shrine that had a cross with a red line through it,” said Lane David.

“I am here because I care about the forest. These are my mountains and I don’t like to see people trash them. My family has been here for a long time and we have dealt with the transients forever.”

Phil Day, a volunteer said he saw the announcement for a clean up in the paper and was disappointed that so few people showed up. Last year there were at least 40 people cleaning up the Gordon Gulch camp sites and only six were digging at West Mag.

“I want to see more people showing up here,” he said. Day has a homeless ministry in Boulder and says he is aware of their plight and that there is a hard line. “We want to get some of them to help up here, make some positive steps to get back to a home, into the program, but there is a service resistance. They have to want to change.”

Joe Hall, Founder of the Peak2Peak Forest Watch dug through the ashes and rocks with his McLeod, a heavy duty rake used in digging fire lines. He pulled out the rocks that lined the fire ring and scattered them into the forest, making it more difficult for others to rebuild. The problem is that campers will build new fires on top of old ones and the pit can grow to three feet above ground, becoming dangerous.

Once the fire rings are dismantled, the group rebuilt them, one layer of rock around the pit.

“If campers come and see a layer of ash on top, people don’t use it, so we build another one for them, send them the message of where to build their fire, so there won’t be so many random sites.”

All you have to do is get out of the car and you’ll see the abandoned, illegal campsites; at least 10 of them were found by lunchtime.

A walk through the camping area might just also offer a rare, once a year concert before our deep throated singers go back to their mud houses.