Lake Travis Underwater Cleanup

Pathfinders Participate in Community Service Project

by Mark Paden

On Sep. 13, 2009, over 1,100 volunteers gathered together to clean up Lake Travis at the 15th Annual Lake Travis Cleanup. Some came to SCUBA dive, while others came to pick up trash along the shoreline. We arrived at Carlos’ and Charlie’s at 6:45 a.m. to meet our Pathfinder Club along with all the other volunteers. We went with Tom’s dive shop volunteers and rode in one of the “Just for Fun” party boats that took us to an island dubbed “Rattlesnake” because of its reputation for there being a lot of rattlesnakes on that island (however there has not been a snake bite on that island for twenty years.)

When we arrived, we were each issued a bag and told to go pick up as much trash as we could. While we were busy picking up trash, others in our group donned SCUBA gear, and, after a short briefing plunged into the lake to pick up trash from along the bottom. When they came up, they brought with them five metal barrels, along over twenty bags of trash! The shoreline cleaners meanwhile, had had equally good success, and had picked up about twenty bags of trash as well.

After all of the divers were on board and all bags of trash had been picked up, the captain of the boat let the kids (and “older kids”) go off the slide that was on the end of the boat. Then we headed back to Carlos’ and Charlie’s for our “pay,” T-Shirts, a meal of burgers (veggie burgers for vegetarians), and chips. After we had eaten, we participated in a raffle to give away prizes to those who had participated in the lake cleanup. We all had lots of fun and I am sure that we will all want to participate in it again next year, at the “16th Annual Lake Travis Cleanup”!

Bats!

Even before the official start of our Pathfinder Year, several SAIL Pathfinders joined with the Spanish Pathfinder Club in early September 2009 to study the Bats Honor, complete with a visit to the Congress Avenue Bridge to see the nightly egress of some 1.5 million Mexican Free-Tail Bats.

New SAIL Pathfinders News and Information

Welcome to the new SAIL News and Information Blog.