The Life and Work of the Backcountry Wilderness Crew

Saturday, June 26

What a week. The training weeks have finally ended and work has at long last begun. This week we were scheduled to hike into North Inlet Ranger Campsite on Monday, and work that day, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday on fixing up the campsites all along the North Inlet trail. This included noting the number of trees that need to be cut down at campsites because of Mountain Pine beetle (we were originally supposed to cut them down ourselves, but that’s another long story), fixing the drainage at one site because a new stream was running right over the tent pad, getting the bear boxes, checking the privies, fixing up the tent pads, stumping trees (which by the way, gives you quite the back and arm workout when your doing it with the long 2 person saw), and cutting/moving trees that had fallen in the campsite.
So the highlight, or I should say funniest moment of our trip happened on the first day, on the walk in. We brought both llamas (Fabian and Mister) with us to help carry our food and tools. About 20 minutes int our hike, we were walking by a river. Mister (the older, less tamed, more obnoxious llama; he is such a complainer let me tell you), bent down to get a drink in the river, and ended up tripping in a hole on the side of the trail and falling into the water with the saddle bags on his back (which by the way, had our food in it. He almost bringing Tara with him too. The river was deep and fast flowing, though only about 10 meters across. And being mister, always trying to escape (Matt had to chase him 5 miles down a mountain last summer) he swam for the other bank. Matt and Ryan quickly (and I would say eagerly, at least on Matt’s part) stripped down to their boxers to go after Mister. Matt went into the water from the upriver side and swam across while Ryan waited downstream, ready to jump in if Mister decided to make a getaway down river. As soon as Matt got near him, Mister turned, and swam across the stream and there was a mad rush to grab his tether.
On our way up to the North Inlet campsite, we took turns stopping at the different campsites to make note of the work that needs to be done at each one and to get some before work pictures.
By the time we got to our campsite and set up, we were off work (5:00). We hung out the rest of the evening, talking, making dinner, and I joined Tara in an abdominal workout (her idea, not mine-she did show me a couple of good hip flexor workouts).
Tuesday, I joined Matt and Luke to work on the drainage at Grouseberry and we slowly work our way back to the North Inlet campsite as we stopped at all the campsites on the way back. The others headed up to the July campsite. We all ended up finishing so early, and getting the work we were supposed to do Wednesday done. Tara decided that night that we’d head back a day early to get some other work done on Thursday. However, the rest of us also decided that the trail up to Lake Nokoni and Lake Nanita needed to be “patrolled”-you know check for fallen trees on the trail, check hikers’ permits and give an help in needed. So we hiked up (everyone but Tara and Luke that is because Tara had to get back for a meeting) to the two lakes first thing in the morning. It was so nice out and we were all so hot from the hike up, we all ended up going for a dip in both lakes (ok, I only went in the first one, but still, they both had ice and snow coating the surface and I wasn’t sure if I would warm up enough after the second one because then we’d be hiking downhill from there. Plus, after seeing the other’s freaking out about the cold and saying how their muscles were going into spasms, I wasn’t to keen on the idea of following them in). After we got back to camp, we had lunch and then hiked out.
Thursday, I hiked with Ryan about 13ish miles as we checked four campsites for what trees needed to be cut for MPB, what bear boxes still needed still be removed, and the level of crap in the privies.
I just calculated the mileage I’ve hike this week. And in 5 days, I did about 47 miles of hiking-some of which was with a rather heavy backpack. I’m much to lazy to calculate the elevation gain, but it’s definitely over 14,000 ft. Sunday alone I think was 7000ish.
Oh and I have some really, really bad news. I did laundry last night and as I took my clothes out of the washer, what did I find? My cell phone. I tried to turn it on later that night. It turned on briefly, then the screen went blank and it started to vibrate nonstop. Even now I can see a lot of moisture still trapped behind the screen. I’m afraid now, the only way to contact me short of seeing me in person, is via email or snail mail. Hopefully in a couple of days it will be in working order again. I’m very sorry, because if you thought it was frustrating getting in contact with me before, it’s gonna be a real pain in the ass now.
Shoot, now I’m gonna have a hard time getting a hold of people to go climbing or hiking. I actually had to bike to Christina’s house this morning because we made plans yesterday evening to go climbing together this morning, but then she had no way of knowing my cell broke and we hadn’t made plans on what time or where we were headed out. Luckily I caught her before she left and we did get out for some climbing at the Iron Clads before the afternoon storms rolled in. It was quite an interesting getting to the ledges. The guide book said the road was fixed up so that normal cars can drive on it now. Well, there were a bunch of times we thought her Honda Civic was going to bottom out. If that was the road fixed up, you must have needed a ATV to get in before.