Hello all!
We have some wonderful news to share with you regarding the hard work our volunteers have put in over the last 6-8 months. First up: let’s talk about that shower building!
The shower building is split into two sides - 4 stalls on the women’s side, and 4 stalls on the men’s. We’ve done some work over the years to make the building ADA accessible, but there was still room for improvement. This year, therefore, we upgraded two of the women’s stalls with shower units like the kind you’d install in your home. For the other two stalls, we replaced the stall walls with new RFP panels (ensuring the layout will still remain ADA accessible). However, while we had everything torn apart, we went the extra mile and upgraded the plumbing with an entirely new setup! That means the old galvanized pipe and dual-turnoff faucets were replaced by a more freeze-resistant pipe and new single-action faucets with large shower heads. HOORAY! These changes will make the showers easier to maintain, clean and winterize!
The second phase of the shower building project is painting. While our volunteers have already gotten a head start of adding a fresh coat of paint throughout the building, we’re hoping to get more volunteers in the Spring of 2022 to help finish up. If you are interested in giving back to camp, please let us know!
Next up: new campfire logs and parking barriers are being installed! As you might imagine, the firefighters needed to make some fairly significant changes to the camp in order to better protect it from the Walker Creek Fire this past summer. That meant tinning out trees, getting rid of underbrush, and disposing of fire fuel - such as the logs laying around the grounds. While camp may have looked “naked” without the usual logs in place for a few months this fall, some local loggers have worked on laying new logs so camp is ready to go for the 2022 season. We’re including some pictures below so you can see how it looked this fall. We’re so thankful this created an opportunity for some upgrades, though, and we’re happy to know the area is more fire-proof than it was before.
Camp has already been winterized for the 2021 season, but we ask that you keep us in mind as spring 2022 rolls around. The process for getting camp ready for new campers can be laborious for a small group, but a joy if we have more willing hands to help. We’ll keep you posted when a date as been set for spring cleaning, but it usually falls sometime in May. Again, we hope you will consider helping out! It is such a blessing to have more volunteers.
Thanks so much for your continued interest and support of Camp Ortoha!
