Hardly Strictly Summer is Coming to an End

Already one week longer that planned in Tahoe and I have one more week to go. But I am hardly complaining as this has been a strictly awesome Summer. Last weekend was insanely awesome at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco. Over 100+ bands over 3 days on 6 stages with 700,000+ people and all for free. Some of the music highlights that I saw were T-bone Burnett, Gillian Welch, Jackie Green, Peter Himmelman, Steve Earle, Robert Earle Keen, and Umphrey's McGee. Sadly I had to leave before the end and missed some of the bands I would have most liked to see.
It was great to see the new dwellings of Kaitlin and Tyler as well. Both live within blocks of GGP and I thank them for letting me stay at their places. Here are some pictures from the festival as well as a couple videos.

Arriving

Video from Rooster Stage watching Steve Earle


walking down to Banjo stage for Gillian Welch

360 degree view of Banjo Stage waiting for Gillian Welch


Crowd at Towers stage watching Jackie Gree





As far as work is concerned, my crew has finished all the work that was scheduled for us at Cold Creek as of last Wednesday. Now we will spend our final week finishing up some loose ends that the forest service crew was unable to complete. I will also have to do my final end of project report to submit to the forest service. Some pictures of our completed work.









The weather wrecked havoc on us for the past week as well. It rained everyday since last Saturday through Wednesday. Tuesday was the worst. When we started our hike to our worksite it was 42 degrees and raining. About 10 minutes into our hike it was colder and hailing. 10 minutes after that it was sleeting and when we got to our worksite it was a combo of those as well as snowing. We were working right at the snowline. It was a blizzard at our highest work spot, but 100 ft in elevation lower it was raining. And in between it was everything. We worked until 9:30 when the forest service told us to pack up and go home as it was too dangerous.

Winter is coming!


I'll probably post once more from Tahoe and a final time from Flagstaff before heading into the backcountry for 5 weeks. I'm working on getting off up here on Wednesday so I can road-trip back through California to see people on my way. Stay tuned for that.

Oh yeah, the salmon are running

Winding Down by Turning Things Up

Bluegrass Concert Friday night in Berkeley. Stanford Invitational Saturday morning. Marie Graduation Party Saturday night to Sunday morning. Rope Swing and Zip line in an alpine lake Sunday evening. A great weekend to say the least. But I will say a bit more.
It was awesome to be back at Stanford and watch the guys beat all the Big West teams. Especially nice to see Thig back up there and running strong. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the season. Opened my first beer at 3:50pm on Saturday afternoon. Finished my last brew around 3:50am Sunday morning. An incredible 12 hours filled that gap.
Finally Ben and I stopped by Long Lake near donner summit to hit up a zip line/rope swing. Can't wait to go back.
Some Pictures







A fun weekend was then followed by a good week of work. We had a minor delay in that a large boulder was in the way of our trail. But gave me the opportunity to teach my crew how to use a pionjar and feathers/wedges to split rocks.
Pictures


drilling holes in rock with pionjar

hammering in feathers and wedges to split rock

rock is split

switchback is coming along. one more week to finish up

Now I am in San Francisco attending 3 days of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass at Golden Gate Park. Day one I saw T Bone Burnett which rocked and now I am about to head to Kaitlin's for a house warming shindig. Should be a great time!

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.

One Month to Go in Tahoe

We have four more weeks of scheduled work up here in Tahoe. I say "scheduled" because there is a chance that we will keep one crew up here til October 15th, but that is highly weather dependent. However I do know that I will not be up here that long. I will either be leaving on October 2nd or October 8th. This all depends on if I do a Zion Fencing project at the start of October or if I do one more week up in Tahoe.
This past week of work my crew finished up everything on Mt. Tallac by Tuesday which meant we moved over to the Cold Creek worksite on Wednesday and started a re-route of a mountain bike trail. This coming week will continue work on this same trail and start doing some more rock work projects.
Here is a picture of the tree stump from hell. It took 6 hours to get this out. We broke a shovel and an axe and it finally took a chainsaw and grip-hoist to get it out.

Labor day weekend up here in Tahoe was crazy. TONS of tourists. So I tried to avoid as much of them as possible. However one of the highlights included seeing Machete on opening night down at Stateline. An awesome movie to say the least.

I also had a lot of free time around camp so I got to make a few rock structures including this one here:

And today we moved camp for our last time. This final month should be very enjoyable as the tourists are gone until winter time leaving all of Lake Tahoe to us to enjoy. Additionally the weather is finally cooling off making work more enjoyable as well as life in general(for me at least). It will be a high of 61 degrees up here Wed and Thursday!
That is all for now...

30 mile day hike through Desolation Wilderness

So I decided Friday afternoon to see if I could hike from South Lake Tahoe to Tahoe City in a day. About 40ish miles. However along the way I decided that it would be a bit to ambitious and with a cold front moving in a bit risky. So instead I hiked to Tahoma. Still a solid 30 mile day hike. I started at just after 4am so I could watch the sunrise up on Mt. Tallac.
Then I proceeded north on the PCT through Desolation Wilderness before exiting the PCT at Richardson Lake and getting a bit lost on fire roads(adding on about 2 miles) before hiking down the Rubicon OHV Trail to Tahoma.I made it to Tahome around 2pm. All in all it was an awesome hike. However I am certainly feeling it today. It would be cool to make the hike all the way to Tahoe City in a day though. It will take a bit more preparation and probably a bit lighter pack. Mine weighed about 25-30 pounds as I wasn't sure if I would spend the night up there. The scenery was quite spectacular as my pictures try to capture.
Wildlife encounters:
About 30 min into the hike I glanced up the trail and my headlight settled on a pair of 2 beady eyes staring at me in the middle of the trail. I stopped dead in my track as I tried to figure out what creature this was staring at me. The eyes were close together about about 3 feet above the trail surface. Debating whether I should try and get my camera out to take a picture I opted to not and instead make noise in case it wasn't a friendly creature that would not appreciate a flash in its eyes. Upon making noise the creature turned to the left and sprang up and off the trail. The silhouette was unmistakably that of a mountain lion. That certainly got my blood pumping. I was on edge for the next 30 minutes and making sure to be plenty noisy.

My second encounter came just after 6am as I was climbing up towards Dick's Pass. I was strolling up the trail when I noticed a small furry creature ambling along just ahead of me. I made my way a bit closer and figured out it was a fat porcupine out for a morning stroll just as I was. I followed him up the trail for a few minutes before he veered off and down the side of the mountain.
Pictures
http://picasaweb.google.com/pvparsel/82830MileDesolationHike#

Map of my hike

Change in the Weather and the Work

This last week was HOT!! Wow, it was close to 90 degrees up on the mountain and it was brutal. However my crew was wrapping up our final section of trail on Mt. Tallac so having the end in site made the heat a bit more bearable. Luckily there is a strong cold front coming in today meaning it will drop from the high 80's to the mid to low 60's this week! Awesome! Possible snow showers also up in the higher elevations. May have to do a small backpacking trip this weekend.
I found out early this week that my crew will be moving over to a different worksite called Cold Creek. This is where the Forest Service Trail crew has been working all summer. However they have fallen behind schedule so we will be going over to help them out a bit. While details are still not known we should be doing more retaining wall construction and trail armoring for a very popular mountain biking trail. We could also be constructing some biking features like jumps and teeter-totters. This work will be quite different than what we have been doing since it is not in a wilderness area. We will be quarrying rock with motorized rock drills and transporting rock using cable high-lines and pulleys.
Since my last post I have been quite busy on the weekends. I have been home to visit my family. My 93 year grandmother is up visiting so I got to chill with her a bit and play a lot of cards. I also got to watch my brother race a half marathon in Salinas where he took 3rd place. I have had to go to Santa Cruz twice for work reasons and on the way down and back I have been able to visit a number of people including Marie, and Bri, and Himmel, and Solomon. I have also been able to go climbing a fair amount up in Tahoe. As summer is coming to an end and the weather will begin to cool I have been trying to get in the lake as much as possible.
There is a rumor that we will be doing 2 more weeks of work up the Tahoe area putting me here until mid-october. That would be very cool. And if that doesn't happen then I will have a bit of time off before my next project in Flagstaff meaning I will be doing something awesome still to be planned the first half of October.
Speaking of my first project back in Flagstaff, I will be leading a 6 week backcountry trails project in the Coronado National Forest in southern Arizona. It will be 6 weeks straight in the backcountry with mules bringing us food and supplies every 2 weeks. Can't wait for that!!
That's all for now.

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