UKC

I am currently wondering what to do with my summer and one of the options is to do some volunteer work. I have a lot of experience as a volunteer teacher but am not keen on doing this as this is now my permanent job. I did some conservation work in Iceland a couple of years ago and loved it so am looking for something similar in a different country. I have lots of relevant outdoor experience for more picky projects.

My requirements are:
-Somewhere mountainous, or at least 'wilderness', not fussed were in the world, somewhere like Greenland or Norway would be ideal (can't for the life of me find any projects in either of these two countries). I would like to do some trekking/mountaineering after the project
-A maximum project length of 4 weeks during late July, August
-Conservation work like maintaining trails etc. preferred over soft counting turtles, hugging elephants rubbish
-Not a sponsored summer holiday style 'gap yar' experience with tacked on volunteer experience
-It shouldn't cost more than £600 (without flights) unless it is to somewhere really special

Does anyone know of a suitable project or can point me in a promising direction?

Thanks
Sam

In reply to sheelba:

Hi Sam,
I know that the National Trust use a lot of volunteers and I'm sure that they have projects in the mountains. I seem to remember that they run volunteering holidays and that there are links on their website's homepage. You can also try contacting individual national park authorities although I think that they recruit volunteers through an organisation called the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers so if may be best to approach them first. Hope this helps. P.

In reply to sheelba:

Help restore Caledonian forest. I did one a few years back, then it was a mixture of tree planting, and clearing brash in forestry to create lekking areas for black grouse. Hard physical work, and good fun. Be prepared for a few hippies though.

http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/tfl.ww.html

In reply to sheelba:

You might find some interesting projects/organisations here:

http://www.outdoorconservation.eu/projects-year.cfm?pageid=18&year=2012

In reply to mcdougal:

Thanks for the info

I know the TCV formerly BTCV do volunteering placements aboard as there was a group in Iceland but I can't find any placements abroad on their website.

I was looking for somewhere a bit more exotic than Scotland and less full of midges.

In reply to sheelba:

In the US, one could string a few projects together with Appalachian Mountain Club:
http://www.outdoors.org/conservation/trails/volunteer/trailopps/vol-crews-s...

or Sierra Club:
http://content.sierraclub.org/outings/national/trip-search/results?trip_typ...

You can make it as wild or not wild as you want. My first trip was the Virgin Islands, but I've also been on trips to Mount Hood, Mt Washington and North Dakota (certainly wild there).