Glacier Park Volunteer Associates pitch in to help spruce up park housing
Joann Schmidt painting a wall in an employee bedroom. (JP Edge photo)
By JP Edge
Hungry Horse News
Buckets of brown paint, rollers, blankets and tape waited inside the 1960s era employee house on a suburban street, ready for the eager volunteers to get started on a chilly spring morning, not a mile from Glacier National Park Headquarters.
As employees begin returning to work for 2022, the Glacier National Park Volunteer Associates have been hard at work to get the area ready and employee housing ready for another busy summer season.
“These really are beautifully built homes and fun to work on,” Joe Schmidt said with a paint roller in hand, a five year volunteer from Iowa. “We moved here to be closer to the Park for the scenery.”
Yet, their work consists of much more than covering scratches and laying paint, although the Associates did repaint the bike path with stencils, and also rebuilt a cabin on the North Fork. Beyond repairing park facilities, Glacier National Park Volunteer Associates have a web of members working all over the park, from the Park entrance points controlling the ticketed entry to helping load tour buses on Logan Pass.
“We get called on when the Park doesn’t have enough of their staff to fill critical positions,” Cheryl Klein, GNPVA President said.
As a non-profit organization with no paid members, the Association gives all proceeds back to the Park, and is given first priority on which projects they want to work on throughout the year.
GNPVA also offers both a summer and winter ranger internship program through the Taggart Schubert Memorial Fund.
Klein said they can always use volunteers. To learn more about volunteering this summer in Glacier National Park, visit www.gnpva.org or search for Glacier National Park Volunteer Associates on Facebook.