Volunteers spend part of their weekend cleaning up homeless camps, trash dumps in Hope

HOPE — Parts of Silver Skagit Road south of Highway 1 in Hope are littered with occupied and unoccupied homeless camps, leaving a once pristine backcountry road with visual blight and trash accumulations in contravention of public squatting laws.

But over two dozen volunteers took time out of their weekend to try to change that dreary outlook and instead work to restore the beautiful Skagit Valley south of Hope by targeting unoccupied, abandoned homeless camps and other trash dumps.

According to a social media post from Fraser Valley resident Ryan Smith, at least 25 volunteers laboured at six different sites alongside equipment operators to remove some of the unsightly trash and other personal effects.

“Wow, what an amazing turn out and fantastic results,” Smith wrote on Facebook. “3 bins full of trash removed from the beautiful Skagit Valley. We had at least 25 volunteers working 6 different sites and a great team of equipment operators dealing with the bigger stuff. Big thanks to Peter Adamo, director for the FVRD, for his support and labor as well as Mayor (Victor) Smith for his help in the effort. Big thanks to Emil Anderson for the dump bin and Pazmac Enterprises for the glove donation.”