Posted By:

Maggie aka "The Turninator"

By Katya Christian

Sustainability Manager

On Thursday, a team of Sugar Bowl employees joined the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) for a volunteer day at the Van Norden Meadow Restoration Project.

This Project has been a multi-year collaborative effort led by SYRCL to restore the degraded state of the Van Norden Meadow, from a century of harmful human intervention. Sitting just downstream the headwaters of the South Yuba River at Sugar Bowl Resort, and home to Royal Gorge Cross Country trails, the 485-acre Van Norden Meadow is an essential wetland ecosystem, carbon sink, and water store for the entire South Yuba River Watershed, and an important space for the Washoe people.

Since 2022, the Van Norden Meadow has been restored to its original state as a floodplain, rather than a collection of deep channels, which is able to support local wetland habitat, store six times as much carbon as the equivalent forested area, and hold water into the fall months — which helps to regulate water supply downstream to the rest of the Watershed, and serve as a natural wildfire break to Sugar Bowl and other surrounding communities.

Sugar Bowl employees aided in a long-term effort to re-vegetate the eroded riverbed on the Meadow by making fascines out of nearby willows and transplanting them onto the soil — with the hopes that, over the next year, the willows will take life and provide a natural water flow regulator, and encourage habitat growth on the otherwise-barren and rocky riverbed. We all enjoyed a morning working outside on the gorgeous Van Norden Meadow, and the opportunity to volunteer our time as a small piece of the incredible restoration efforts right in our backyard. Stay tuned for fascine growth progress next year!

Read more about the Van Norden Meadow Restoration Project here: