We left for Zion on Wednesday the 7th and made the drive up through some spectacular country, but of course the drive through Zion was the best. Sadly because we were doing fencing on the border we were not able to spend much time in the main part of the Park. Not, to say where we were wasn't amazing, but I just need to go back on my free time and explore the main area.
Our task was to put up a 4 wire fence on the southwest corner of the park to keep cattle from the neighboring BLM and private property land from entering the park and eating the vegetation. In Utah there is a free range cattle law which says it is the responsibility of people to fence cattle out, rather than the cattle owners to fence them in, which is why the park service contracted us.
On the first work day we spent a lot of time hauling out supplies and equipment to the work-site. Like spools of wire, t-posts, 2 Pionjars (80lb jackhammer, drill, chisel combo tool), fuel, and hand tools. Upon getting to the end of the completed fence I realized we were in for a hell of a task. We were going to have to build our fence through a number of sandstone washes and small ravines, over large wind carved boulders, and through old lava flows, as well as sandy river bottoms.
The terrain we were fencing through:
My supervisor, ATG, who is the company fencing expert was saying by the 3rd day that this was the hardest section of fence he had ever worked on. We had to drill almost every t-post hole into rock as even where there was soil to pound it in, it was rarely more than 1 foot deep which is far to shallow, meaning we first had to dig out the soil, the drill. However the difficulty of the terrain meant we were able to get very creative and use some unorthodox fencing techniques.
One such technique was this invention of ours to close the gap between the last t-post and the stone wall. We did this by drilling holes in the wall and stringing the wires into them.
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| From Zion Fencing April 7-14 |
The strength and stability of all fences is derived from the braces on the ends of the fence and as such is the most important part. The first few days I spent mastering proper H-brace construction.
(perfecting the H-Brace)
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| From Zion Fencing April 7-14 |
The second half of the week ATG would outline the goals for the day and give me half the crew and I was in charge of making sure everything got done.
For the most part the weather was clear skies and in the 60's. However, at the end of the project a system came in and as we were in the middle of nowhere we had no idea what was coming. I called Himmel who was kind enough to give me a weather report for our area. Had I not called him, we would have been drastically under-prepared for the rain/snow and cold temps that came the next day. The whole crew was very grateful for Himmel's assistance. The system that did come in made drilling very hazardous so we retreated to a cave for a few hours and made a fire and enjoyed the long break from the cold/wet/work.
One night I was sitting around the fire reading while the volunteers were off throwing the frisbee around and then they suddenly came running over to me and one English kid Nick was eager to show me something. He pulled his hand from behind his back and it was covered in cactus thorns/balls. Apparently he had attempted a diving catch and landed with his hand in a Cholla cactus. And if you don't know about cholla cactus it is the worst thing for your hand to get caught in as there are barbs on the end of the needles that make pulling out the needles very difficult and painful. Yet Nick was in wonderful spirits despite the predicament because he would have some cool pictures to go home with.
I found a video on youtube showing what nick went through numerous time as he had about 3 balls on his arm and hand.
By the end of our project we had finished putting posts in all the way to the corner, as well has putting up a bunch of wire. I leave next Wednesday for a 4 day project that has yet to be determined although the rumor is it will be down by Lake Mead. And I will follow that project up by going back to the Grand Canyon 2 days later. That's all for now, I may head up to the mountains during my days off to do some finally spring skiing before the snow melts.
Check out all the pictures from this trip
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