Rock Projects are a Huge Success

So we have finished the most technical rock projects of the summer and we had the head honchos of the Tahoe Basin National Forest Service check out our work and they had nothing but praise. The head of the Tahoe Forest Service Trails program also offered me a job for next year should I want to come back and work for him, so that is exciting.

They have since assigned us previously unscheduled rock work which means we will remain up high on the mountain instead of coming down to do routine maintenance work. So we will begin that work on Monday.

I am currently relaxing at home now and it is nice to come out of the mountains and sleep in my own bed for a change, rather than on a thermarest in a tent. That's all for now. I'm back to Tahoe on Sunday and will be passing through Davis to get Dos or Guad if anyone is around and would like to meet me there.


putting in one of the final stones on the largest wall


The completed wall


Completed stairs with Tahoe in the upper right corner


Completed small wall in foreground with finished stairs in the background


My crew working on two of our walls

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.

Been a while: Greetings from Tahoe

Wow, it has been madness since my last blog post. There is far too much to write about since April 26th but the short of it is that after a month more of work as an assistant supervisor in Flagstaff I am now seated in a coffee shop in south lake tahoe working as a Field Supervisor for the California office. I will be in Tahoe working for 4 months before returning to Flagstaff to finish my last month of my internship and then working as a supervisor for them through the end of 2010 and then who knows where I will be.

View from worksite

My crew getting the job done

I only have one day off right now and am anxious to get out and explore around so this is the end of this blog post. However I have every Friday Saturday and Sunday off up here so people are welcome and encouraged to come up and visit and go climbing, camping, kayaking, swimming, fishing, or anything and everything else. Next post should have many more pictures and stories. Until then, goodbye.

Step 20: Staying busy and coming to Davis

A quick post before I head back to the Grand Canyon tomorrow morning. I spent 4 days at Lake Mead doing Fencing. Our Zion fencing crew got moved to Lake mead so with their addition we had over 40 people working with us. This meant managing all these people was quite a task, but one that was very challenging and enjoyable for me. Between hail, wind, rain, super hot weather and flat tires and a disorganized project partner without a clue as to where the fence was going it was a very eventful 4 days which I will not get into details about right now as I have a crazy day getting ready for the canyon. I went climbing yesterday by Sedona and was learning how to trad climb and place and take out gear, so that was cool. But most exciting is I am coming to Davis for 7 days as soon as I get back from the canyon. So if you will be in town and are reading this then I will be hanging out with you because you are cool and reading this. However, if you are not reading this and not in Davis, then you are not cool and I make no promises about seeing you. (although it may still happen)
Adios

Step 19: Zion Fencing

I'm back in Flagstaff now and enjoying my days off, although I wish I was in Davis for picnic day. Everyone who is racing good luck, and everyone who is not have an awesome time.

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.

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)

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

Step 18: Catching Up and Changes on the Horizon

Well I am now officially over halfway through my internship and it has been awesome.
Since my last blog post it has been non-stop. I went back to the canyon for 9 more days of work followed by flying the next day to southern California where I met up with Becky and road tripped up the coast visiting family until we arrived in Davis. Davis of course was awesome to see old friends and play some Frisbee Golf. Although a terrible tragedy was the lack of Colorado Enchiladas at Dos. After a far too short 24hour Davis visit it was back to Flagstaff and work the following day where we worked at Montezuma Castle National Monument for 4 days installing a drip irrigation system on a 30acre riparian habitat restoration project. Besides our project partner underestimating what ass –kicking workers we were and running out of work after 2.5 days it was a blast. It was cool learning new skills and quite relaxing doing car camping rather than backcountry work. The lack of work allowed us to sightsee and it was quite cool to see the old ruins and cliff dwellings of the Sinagua Indians. Pretty remarkable stuff.
not enjoying the sun

our new friend. Followed him up the trail for 15 minutes

driving up highway 1

my crew discussing the schematics of our irrigation project


However it has been the last 48 hours that has been most exciting. Upon getting back we found out we would have 10 days off before going back to the canyon on the 11th. So the trip planning began as well as the return to the bars. Last night was a karaoke contest at the Green Room($200 for winner) and we have some damn fine karaoke singers in our group(not me). Sadly none of my co-workers won. Luckily there was a raffle for $100 tab at the bar. We didn’t have the winning ticket for the raffle either though. But, in the inebriated confusion at 2am my co-worker Alison ran up to claim she had the winning ticket even though she was 1 number off. No one came forward with the right ticket so the drunk organizers gave Alison the $100 tab so the exhausting night would finally be over. So now we have a $100 tab at the Green Room. Yes this is the place with 25cent drinks on Wednesday. Some quick math with a calculator tells me this is around 400 drinks….wow.
Today I had a meeting with my boss to discuss job prospects with ACE after the conclusion of my internship in June. After 10 minutes my boss offers me a job starting this Wednesday as an Assistant Crew Leader for our fencing project at Zion National Park. We have a badass fencer as the supervisor who used to work for the Park Service before coming to ACE as our lead fencer. I am supposed to learn from him and become an equally badass Fencer so I can lead my own crews. As I have zero fencing skills at the moment I am terribly excited to learn from him and of all places in Zion! So yeah, I am not going back to Grand Canyon for a while. Between now and June I will be splitting my hours between being an Assistant Crew Leader and my internship. I am still not sure how this will work but it will be an interesting learning experience. And if I show myself to be an adept assistant crew leader I will be due for a promotion to a salaried Field Supervisor come July. So yeah, I may be putting off my aspirations to be a backcountry ranger for a little while yet and follow this road a bit longer.
In other news I have been doing a bit more running and by a bit more I mean a 60 min run once or twice a week. I went for an amazing run on my last day in the Grand Canyon, and now that the snow is melting rapidly in Flagstaff the trails are clearing and the running here is incredible. I feel like I am living at the trailhead to the Emigrant Trail in Truckee, but with even more trails. It’s crazy. That’s all I have to say for now. Stay tuned for many pictures and stories of Zion when I return.
run in the canyon

More pictures:
Grand Canyon
Montezuma Castle