While many students slept in Saturday morning, a few decided that floating down the Yakima River Canyon was more fun. The Center for Leadership and Community Engagement (CLCE) partnered with Outdoor Pursuits and Rentals (OPR) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to  bring back the Yakima River Canyon Float for the third year in a row to help clean the canyon and give freshmen a fun opportunity to gain community service hours. CLCE program manager Kim Jellison said the event was “open to all students.”

“It’s fun,” said Jasmine Bustamante, a senior accounting major and one of the event’s leaders, “floating with different international students, getting to know them, getting to know new students I’ve never met before.”

The Yakima River Canyon Float is just one of the many programs the CLCE puts on every weekend with the exception of Homecoming. The ultimate goal of these projects is to cultivate leadership opportunities for students of all walks of life, even those who have little to no desire to lead anyone.

“I don’t really like putting myself on the spot much, but these events help me gain more experience to do so,” Bustamante said.

The Yakima River Canyon Float ran from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Volunteers were driven to Umtanum Canyon trailhead, where they met the OPR assigned guides, picked up supplies, blew up their rafts and began the float downstream.

The initial float was the most relaxing aspect of the day, where students enjoyed the countryside and snatched up any litter they spotted along the way. The group was then shuttled off to Big Pines, the biggest recreation site out of the four rec sites in Yakima Canyon.

The students trail-brushed  (helping clear the trail of debris), picked up litter, stained the kiosk boards along the trail, and pulled weeds such as Russian Thistle for two hours. Afterwards, the volunteers broke for lunch and continued on to Roza, another rec site, where they  worked in the canyon until they finally headed back to campus.

“Companies look for this [volunteer experiences] on resumes — how much you’ve given back to your communities,” Jellison said.

The event is not just a win for the students and nature, it also takes a load off the BLM, the organization responsible for the care and cultivation of the Yakima River Canyon parks and river. The BLM only has two park rangers allotted for all the care and upkeep of the 214-mile-long river and the rec sites surrounding it.

The rangers maintain the multitude of campsites, picnic tables and fire rings, as well as the nearby dumpsters and vault toilets, and give information to visitors and guide hikers. They also provide first aid to visitors in the event of rattlesnake bites and bee stings.

“It’s a big canyon and we help them out,” Jellison said. “There are gonna be students that are here on campus for four years who have never been out and looked at what this area has to offer. It’s a beautiful countryside and a great way to bridge students with their community.”