Lots and lots of rock

all of us on top of Mt. Tallac
So, it's been a few weeks since my last blog and much has happened. When I left off I was about to go to a beer and bluegrass festival. That was more awesome than you can imagine. $30 for free beer from 30 breweries and 3 incredible bluegrass bands. I went with 12 or so people from my crew and we had an amazing time, and I will be back again next year.
I also had 10 wonderful friends come up to visit the following weekend. What started as a visit from 1-3 friends blossomed rapidly into and huge group of us having a blast all weekend. From hiking up Mt. Tallac and Fed carrying his dog most of the way up and back down, to spending all day at lake tahoe and then camping up in the woods getting drunk and rowdy with a rusty hatchet throwing competition (you can all imagine who won), it was spectacular. Everyone was sorely missed after they left.

I have since been very busy with work. We are nearly done with our largest rock work projects of the summer. 2 of our 3 multi-walls have been completed and the final and largest is due to be completed early next week. I have posted some pictures, but they are not quite up to date as my camera lens finally broke early this week (over a year since I initially broke it after a sophia's trivia night), so I have not captured out most recent advancements. While we have had a few broken/crushed fingers, we have been very fortunate to not have any serious injuries thus far. The same cannot be said for the young fellow who had to be evacuated via helicopter from above our worksite after he tumbled 100 yards head over heels down a talus slope breaking a number of bones and incurring more than a few serious lacerations.

That's all for now. Here are some pictures.

My crew working on foundation stones for our largest wall


Chiseling on stones for the lower part of the wall


Upper wall in middles stages


Upper wall Nearing Completion


Final touches going on upper wall


Dropping a stone to use on the wall


Our new staircase


Our largest wall as of Monday. Then camera died.

Unending Things To Do

While I may be writing this blog only for Lonac at this point that is fine by me. But since I have removed my Facebook account perhaps more will look here for what I am up to. As for why I removed my facebook it is because I am lucky to be online for 1 hour each week and it proved to be more of a burden than a help for me. So if I do get more than an hour to be online I will try and post something here.

I have been awesomely busy. Work is going great. I have been moved to the west shore where I am heading up the largest project of the summer which is the reconstruction of a set of switchbacks on the Mt. Tallac Trail in Desolation Wilderness. It is a 3 mile up hill hike to the worksite each day where we are building a number of dry stone retaining walls. The largest of which is about 40ft long and 6 feet tall. Our building specifications require that over half the stones weigh more than 150 pounds. This entails quite a bit of creativity for us as we are in a wilderness area meaning we cannot use any form of mechanized help. So moving all these stones by hand is quite daunting and often dangerous, but very fun an rewarding at the same time. I have not loaded any of the pictures of our work onto my computer just yet but I will be before too long and then you can see exactly what I am doing.

I am lucky to have every weekend off and this has allowed me to have some extremely fun times up here. I have gone on a backpacking trip in Desolation Wilderness, rock climbing all around the basin, floating down the truckee river, swimming in the lake, drinking at the bars, gambling at the casinos, watching 4th of july fireworks, and am heading to a beer and bluegrass festival today at Northstar.

That is all I have time for now. I will try and post more regularly and include more pictures. Here are a couple from my recent backpacking trip.