Southern Sierran
Join Airport-Marina For the Do's and Don'ts of Mountain Ecotourism on May 18

BY ESTHER SPACHNER
Airport-Marina Group

Colette Simonds and the mountains she loves PHOTO Courtesy of OFPRINKITI LA

"Mountain Ecotourism" will be presented by Colette Simonds, a veteran scaler of the Himalayas and the Andes, at the May 18 meeting of the Airport-Marina group of the Sierra Club. She confessed that she "only" made it to 21,000 feet on the Himalayas in Nepal.

A native of France, Simonds started climbing mountains as a youth in the Alps, before she came to the States. Asked about her favorite climbs, she replied, "When it comes to mountains, I like all of them."

Simonds, who lives in El Segundo, hikes and backpacks with various Sierra Club groups as well as with other nature-centered organizations.

Her presentation will highlight the discrepancies in ecotourism she found between the rhetoric of fellow scalers over the past 10 years in the Andes and Himalayas and their actual practices, and offer suggestions for improvement.

Simonds, who holds the bachelor's degree in mathematics and a masters' in geography, is a math teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District and has taught geography at the college level. The free meeting will be held on Monday, May 18, at 7:45 p.m. in the Community Room at Burton Chace Park, at the end of Mindanao Way in Marina del Rey. Refreshments will be served. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. For further information, contact (310) 207-6902.

In addition, Kathy Knight, group conservation chair, will give a brief update on the Revised Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on Playa Vista Phase 2, and proposed alternative uses for the 110 acres.

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