Injuries, Wildlife, and end of summer fun

This past week has been a rough one on my crew and myself as far as injuries are concerned. Monday saw one of my volunteers drop a 200lb+ rock on his foot. We had to take him to the ER right away in fear of a broken foot. Luckily it was not broken, but did tear a bunch of tendons and ligaments in his foot and calf. Tuesday saw an intern cut her finger open on a sharp rock. On Wednesday I smashed my finger between two rocks. Don't think it's broken, but will probably lose the nail.

And Thursday another intern pulled/strained a muscle in her shoulder while moving a rock. The commonality between all the incidents was they all occurred in the first 15 min of the day. We will have to go back to the drawing board to make sure we don't suffer any further setbacks.
However, we still got some good work done this week, including finishing the lower half of a switchback on a mountain bike trail. We moved some gigantic rocks for this wall.

This is a more advanced level mountain bike trail which gave me a lot of freedom to make my switchback challenging. Because we are right by a creek I chose to make the trail so there is no dirt on this section of the switchback to avoid erosion and make the trail a bit more difficult/fun. So cyclists will ride down the stones we have placed in the wall. We now have to construct a retaining wall for the upper portion of the switchback.


We have also seen quite a bit of wildlife this week. On Monday we saw a coyote near our worksite.

Then on my way to the coffee shop this morning I came across some bears wandering around the neighborhood.

From September and Cold Creek

And now with the summer winding down everyone is trying to make the most of our time left here. Thursday night we all went to a pool hall where I went undefeated. No surprise. Friday night they have $15 all you can drink wine tasting and hors d'oeuvres at stateline. Spent most of the day yesterday at the lake and last night a great funk/rock band was playing at the local brewery. I may be coming down to the bay area the next two weekends as well. Head for the Hills is playing at the Ashkenaz in Berkely Friday and then a graduation party saturday. The following weekend is the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco with three days of free music in Golden Gate Park. Then I will be pretty much done up here in Tahoe and will be looking forward to 10 days off work.