Our first week of Crew has come and gone already! It was a fast and slow week, as is the theme with everything so far. Our group of 4 (all friends) came in Sunday afternoon. We did an orientation about all things camp-life (well, all relevant things camp-life), like ticks, proper gear, pooping in the woods, and much more. Our food was delivered a bit late, so we scrambled to organize and get dinner ready while they set up tents.
Monday, our first work day, included a more comprehensive tool and safety talk. They got their first taste of carrying 18 pound rock bars. Luckily we cache our tools at our worksite so we don't have to carry them every day, but rock bars are a fan favorite (sarcasm) nonetheless. Our first project was to set stepping stones on a muddy portion of trail that everyone was going around. We spent Monday finding and quarrying (getting rocks out of their holes and to our site) 5 rocks. Dave and I quarried the last rock together, and sadly watched it tumble downhill and into our giant fill hole (hole dug for mineral soil). We scream ROCK when a rock takes off rolling down a hill, so our warning sounded like "ROCK... Shit.... ROCK.... No damnit no..... ROCK... Oh for crying out loud.... ROCK.... NOOOOO" thankfully it only took one try to get out.
Everyone was beat on Tuesday, and we still had 3 rocks to set. We did 2 as a group, then realized that we would need to use our "backup" rock, meaning there would be 2 more to set. It's pretty much the last thing you want to hear, aside from "alright, well, we have to take this all out of the ground now." Dave and I decided we would let them set one rock on their own and we would set the 5th. They did a great job, and it was a great moment for us to see how they applied what we taught them. We ended a little early as a reward after naturalizing the worksite. The picture above is of the first 3 set rocks.
We had little direction on what we should do next, so we decided to wing it and see what happened. We found one section that needed a lot of tread work, meaning changes to the tread that you walk on. Mostly tread problems happen because people are like water and want to take the path of least resistance, so they walk around any "obstacle", like a rock, and eventually widen the trail significantly. We re-shaped the tread and blocked off where we didn't want people walking.
Dave had found two waterbars earlier in the week that needed work, so we continued to that site. They were pretty terrible waterbars, either they were poorly set or had been there for a long long time. The more we looked at the area the more work we saw. The next two days were spent revamping the waterbars (thankfully without any rock work) and tread in between them (about 60 feet worth).
This picture is our final product. The second waterbar is further down the trail, and the trail past the first waterbar got significantly changed. Good trail work should go unnoticed by hikers despite how much work we put into it. I wish I had a picture of how much we destroyed the area to fix everything, and of how much work it took to make it look like that again.
We did two big projects and one smaller one, so we were feeling pretty good. At the end of the day on Thursday we realized that we only have 5 weeks of crews at Noble View left (3 are on a different trail system), and we have to do as much as we can to totally overhaul the trail system here. We have a big project to complete. There are currently 64 trail junctions and it's being cut to 32. Many trials are being closed or re-routed. "Crap", we thought, "we need to do some of that. Now."
Friday morning we had 2 hours of work, so we started to close our first trail. We only got one end of it done, but it's better than nothing. Next week we're planning on picking a quadrant and tackling it as best we can.
After our crew left Dave and I went into town. Russell is not much of a town. Main St. is not what you think, more so a street that people live on than a street where happenings happen. There's two churches, a senior center, and a post office, though. I tried to mail something at the post office but it closes for TWO HOURS for lunch every day. I have a feeling one person runs the post office. We went to real "town", Westfield, for errands. Today's my one full day off (kids leave Friday afternoon and the next crew comes in Sunday afternoon).
I spent this morning hiking around the southeast section of the trail system. I looked for any potential projects but also for some cool things that the map promised, like cellar holes and ledge views. I did find a cool cellar hole, but the "lookout and ledges" provided me with the view in the photo above. Not very impressive. I did go to the big waterfall (we had been swimming in the smaller one), which was really cool.
I also made my washing machine out of a 5 gallon bucket and plunger. It worked surprisingly well! I also cleaned and organized my tent, which now looks like a mini Motel 6, but much cleaner. Molly's Manor, I call it. There's a wedding here this weekend (well, currently), so I've been making myself scarce by lounging near my tent. It was bad enough that wedding guests were getting ready with me plunging my clothes in a bucket, I figured I best either put on decent clothes or hide. I think I may disguise myself in mud and go steal some steaks up there later.
Week one is over, week 2 starts tomorrow. How time flies when you're having fun with rock bars.
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