For the two consecutive weekends of August 3-4 and August 10-11, Friends of Cacapon member, Jim Ott will lead the 2024 Cacapon River Cleanup Challenge.  Each weekend from Saturday (8am) thru Sunday (5pm) we will meet, organize teams, and use Kayaks and/or canoes to hunt and remove debris from the river. We will collect what we see but our main targets will be the automobile, tractor trailer and heavy equipment TIRES that populate the river bottom.   All sections of the 81-mile water trail are open for searching by a team or individually.

This year the teams lead by Jim Ott will focus on that section of river spanning from Wardensville to Capon Bridge as part of a larger years long project to remove as close to 100% of tires from this span.

• At the start of each weekend, each team will briefly convene a “safety and plan of attack” meeting
• If other leaders are available, we can extend our search downstream from Capon Bridge as well.
• Jim will send further details to all volunteers who sign up and provide an email address.
• A short video on “Tire Wrangling” that covers some basic aspects of hunting and extracting tires will be posted at the FOC website in advance of the cleanup dates.
• AVENZA maps of discrete sections of the entire 81-mile River Trail as well as a quick tutorial of the Free Program AVENZA will also be posted at FOC in advance of the cleanup dates . These interactive maps are FREE and are a smart phone tool that allows one to follow their progress along the river as they move about (regardless of phone service) and map the location of debris or cached tires for later pickup.