Sea to Sky Gondola Sustainability Education Program

 

by Martha Warren

Sea to Sky Gondola, along the Sea to Sky Highway/Hwy 99, just south of Squamish, British Columbia. Photo: Tara O’Grady

In times of competing and often confusing messaging about sustainability, it can be difficult to be heard. So how best to develop an education program on the subject of mountain sustainability? 

Dr. James Thornton, GEO Mountains Scientific Project Officer at the Mountain Research Initiative, connected Michael Allchin, Martha Warren, and Scott Williamson, in a collaboration between the Sea to Sky Gondola, GEO Mountains and the Mountain Research Initiative, the University of Calgary, and the Arctic Institute.

The result is a comprehensive program for learners of all ages covering how mountains are created, what changes them, and the shared responsibilities of mountain stewardship. The main pieces of the program are: mountain building; climate and weathering; glaciers, snow, and water; natural hazards; biodiversity; and mountains and people. Careful consideration was given to student engagement, incorporating the natural and social sciences, arts and humanities, and also to accommodating different learning styles.

Built around the question “What do mountains mean to you?”, the course structure is circular, asking students to share how they feel on the mountain when they meet at the beginning, and then again during a reflection exercise at the end. In between are a hike, hands-on activities, and demonstrations. We explore questions like: How is a chewy candy bar like a glacier? What is watermelon snow? Why should we count the tadpoles in this vernal wetland? What art has been inspired by mountains?

“This is a comprehensive program for learners of all ages covering how mountains are created, what changes them, and the shared responsibilities of mountain stewardship.”

All age groups do a weather measurement activity to stress the importance of being proactive in the face of climate change, and the power of mass participation in citizen science initiatives. Students consider how weather impacts mountains, and how mountains impact weather, using sling-psychrometers, anemometers, compasses, and soil thermometers.

Teaching the course at the Gondola is an easy fit due to the location. The mountain is more than an outdoor classroom. First of all, it is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish Nation.) The summit is at 885 metres, just high enough for visitors to travel from coastal rainforest at base, to the subalpine at the summit. And it is located in Átl’ka7tsem Howe Sound, a Biosphere Reserve recognized by UNESCO as being of global ecological significance and rich in biodiversity. With a profusion of examples of how mountains are made and change, students can see the rock cycle at work. There is a local volcano (Mount Garibaldi, or Nch’ḵay̓) and folded mountains. Students study how glaciers move and sculpt mountains and carve out a fjord. There are flagging trees and krummholz. Roots grow out of rock, and there is an abundance of regolith and duff, felsic dykes, and erratics. 

The program is primarily about shared experience and stewardship of mountains around the world, focusing on the extreme at-risk areas of the Hindu Kush Himalaya, South Caucasus, Andes, and East Africa, and on transboundary cooperative efforts. In keeping with the theme of sharing mountains in a sustainable way, all the teaching materials are also shared online. These are open source, available to anyone, at Mountain Sustainability teaching materials and the GEO Mountains site at Mountain Sustainability course. The next step in the program’s evolution is to develop further case studies and actively connect teachers with teachers, and students with students, citizen science groups, and environment clubs, so they can connect with each other while doing similar activities. 

Sea to Sky Gondola’s Summit Lodge. Photo: Paul Bride

What have we learned from running the course so far? 

  • Don’t hand out the candy bars for the glacier demonstration until you have explained they are in fact for demonstration first, and for eating afterwards. 

  • Don’t presume a student’s body language tells you whether they are really listening and engaged. It could well be the student who appears asleep during the weather experiments will be the one who later explains to you precisely how an anemometer works.

  • Don’t underestimate the school science curriculum. Most visiting students have an excellent grasp already of subduction and tectonic plate movement in general. They want hands-on experiments and activities that allow for creative expression and problem-solving.

  • Don’t expect reluctance. In response to our attempt to embed emotions with substantive learning, students have shared their personal experiences generously and enthusiastically as demonstrated by their personal reflections in their field guides at the end of the program. Some of the reflections are sketches of wildlife, or doodles, or concrete poetry in the shape of mountains. One had the following words scattered across the page: “In awe, Beauty, Creative, Freedom, Joy, Loved, Open.” Student comments have ranged from “Being here makes me want to ski” to deep metaphors about the mountains we climb every day in our minds.

We feel the message is being heard. We hope the students feel heard, too.

Martha Warren is the Education Coordinator at Sea to Sky Gondola in Squamish, BC, and the architect of their new Mountain Sustainability Program.

 
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