Sand Rock Graffiti Removal Trail Day- April 23, 2016
The SCC teamed up with Cherokee Rock Village to host the second graffiti removal trail day! For over 20 years the historic and beloved Alabama crag has been littered with trash and graffiti. The SCC has worked for years to keep the area clean to no avail. Finally, the County decided to do something about it and turned the area into a community park. Sand Rock’s name has since changed to Cherokee Rock Village and now hosts a pavilion, bathrooms and a playground, but for climbers Sand Rock will always be the roadside Alabama crag.Cherokee Rock Village park board has been working with the SCC for a few years to clean the area up. In 2015 the SCC found a graffiti removal product called Elephant Snot that works GREAT! The SCC quickly applied for a Cornerstone Conservation Grant from the American Alpine Club to help fund the graffiti removal projects and got to work! Thanks to the generous grant from the AAC, we were able to purchase enough elephant snot to completely clean the graffiti at Sand Rock and many other areas around the Southeast!
The first graffiti removal trail day took place in October 2015. We worked alongside the Access Fund Conservation Team and over 20 volunteers to erase as much graffiti as we could, but still didn’t get it all. You can watch a timelapse of the disappearing graffiti here: https://www.facebook.com/ConservationTeam/videos/796687960441660/.
Over 25 volunteers came out, including the Chattanooga Christian School and Auburn University climbing teams, and set to work! Half the volunteers worked to erase graffiti and the other half set out to spread mulch, work on erosion on some of the popular trails and do trash pick-up. We worked harder and longer than most trail days require to finish the job, but we are proud to announce we erased all the graffiti we could find at the park!! This is a huge feat for an area like Sand Rock that most people wrote off years ago as a lost cause. The park is in better shape than it’s ever been thanks to the countless hours of volunteer work over the past decade!
After the trail day the SCC hosted a cookout in the pavilion. We did a big raffle, grilled burgers and dogs, and mingled with Cherokee Rock Village Board members. Mrs. Leann Hill, climbing advocate and board member, presented the SCC with a “Key to Sand Rock” as a thank you for our hard work.