Sunrise on the Yellowstone River at 7am to start off a day of cleaning up the Yellowstone. This annual event gives Rocky Mountain College students the opportunity to give back to the river that literally brings life to Billings, MT.
Professor Luke Ward and Professor Kayhan Ostovar address students ensuring they have their life-vests, gloves, and trash bags.
As the journey begins Professor Ward and students haul an aluminum flat-bottom boat through a shallow channel in order to reach the river.
Students scour a river island with bags ready, hoping to make their impact on the health of the Yellowstone ecosystem.
Beached and sun-bleached Cottonwoods lay far back on the banks of the river. Remnants of the flooding of the Yellowstone that deeply affected Southern-Montana last summer. Most of the bigger pieces of trash were interspersed with this flood debris.
This is referred to as Detroit-riprap. In the late 80’s through the 90’s, people fortified their banks from erosion using old cars that were no longer in vogue. This has resulted in a faster and more erosive Yellowstone, that tends to throw car parts all throughout the riparian zone of the Yellowstone.
Here Jack spots some buried Detroit rip-rap.
With the help of Rocky students and the emotional support of this photographer, Jack cuts through the buried beam. This piece of corroded metal would be added to Rocky’s growing junk collection.
At the end of the journey we hauled all of our finds up out of the river, threw all the metal in a large dumpster, and sorted the trash for recycling.
According to Professor Ward, Rocky recovered over 11,000 pounds of trash from our river! That means our haul was the weight of an Asian elephant! Some of our weird finds included an angle grinder with cord, and a small unicorn floaty recovered by Josie Eccher and Kalon Sheldon. We then loaded up all of our rivercraft for the sleepy ride back to Billings.