Multimedia: Spring cleaning on Tygart Creek

John Flavell
The Independent

April 26, 2009 12:19 am

— Kari Mattingly combined a passion for Tygart Creek and volunteerism and turned them into a seven-mile canoe trip Saturday to clean up the creek.
Mattingly, 17, is the president of the Boyd County High School chapter of the Kentucky Youth Council for Volunteer Services. She and the chapter members organized volunteers from the school, Grassland’s Boy Scout Troop 101 and those who canoe the creek regularly for the annual cleanup of the creek.
“For as long as I can remember my family has been coming down to this creek,” Mattingly said near the entrance to Carter Caves State Resort Park. “Last year we came down to the creek and tried to put a dent in it. This year we were more formal about getting the word out.”
East Carter High School student Rebecca Wente rode with Mattingly for this year’s event.
Retired Greenup Circuit Court Clerk Jim Garthee, who said he had been paddling the same stretch of Tygart for about 30 years, paddled the creek this year with his wife, Chris.
“This gorge area is a very unique place and we need to bring awareness to it,” he said. “I feel we need to leave it better than we found it.”
Private landowners along the route allowed for three drop and pickup points for the garbage piled by the volunteers.

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