Pro Crew

Our last week of the season promised to be an awesome one. We would have a "pro crew" of just us co-leaders minus the two that had a teen crew, and we would get some serious work done at Noble View. There were talks of doing a particularly difficult re-route or doing more timber work (my personal fave). Most importantly, it would just be us leaders without any teens. We could just go do the work without having to manage anyone else, and we could drink beer at the end of the day, goddamnit!

Hallelujah!

As with everything this season, plans didn't work out as they were supposed to. Originally it was supposed to be me, Lumberjack, Rosalie, and Wiley. Then I was told that Rosalie was being put on the other crew. Lumberjack had to deal with a lot of insurance nonsense with his accident, so he left early to go home to NY to do so. A crew of 4 went to a crew of 2, and we quickly realized that our hopes of doing more technical and demanding trail work were squashed. That was okay, though, since our priority was to get all sign posts in the ground and all signs on said posts.

Sounds easy, yeah? Well, it is and it isn't. We still had 10 posts to get in the ground. Each post can take anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours to get in the ground, depending on what the ground is like and how easy/hard it is to dig and get rocks for crush. The process averages about an hour/post, so we were looking at a full 8 hour day spent just digging postholes. Hanging signs is a difficult one person job or reasonably easy two person job. With two people you can have one person hold the sign straight and one person drill or hammer it in. Two people can also carry many more signs, preventing more trips to and from base camp.

We were ready to get our week started and I was looking forward to a quieter, easier week. My back was feeling better but not quite to 100% yet, so it seemed ideal. Monday started off at the KCC with food planning and shopping, which only took half a day. Packing and getting to Noble View took most of the afternoon, so the only trail work we got to do that day was hammering spikes into our bog bridges. Thrilling.

Solo Posthole digging makes for a funky pack

Tuesday was spent post hole digging solo. The scattered locations of the posts meant it was more logical for us to split up and cover more ground, but it meant we had to carry all of the tools we needed and do all of the work ourselves. Ideally, two people per post is best so one person can dig and one person get make crush and get wedge rocks, and carrying tools is much easier. Not only were we taking on the workload of double the people, but it was hotter than hell. I started off the morning in great spirits and got two posts in the ground. By post # 3 I was feeling beat, by post # 4 I wanted to lay down on trail and pass out.

The posts were finished by Wednesday at lunch, and we were more than ready to switch gears and hang signs instead. True to fashion, the bit we had for our drill didn't match the screws. It worked, but it would have been stripped after just a few signs. Big Ben ventured to three hardware stores while Wiley and I organized the 75 signs to be hung and planned out efficient routes. We finished the day with bad news: the bit was nowhere to be found, not even at Home Depot; we would be packing up EVERYTHING (personal stuff, all of Noble View group gear and tools) and joining the other crew for Thursday instead. On top of that, we realized that despite following the specific instruction of where to place the posts some of them were in the wrong spots. The signs have arrows that only make sense when the sign is hung a certain way (like <----- Noble View 0.5 miles), and to hang the signs in that certain way meant the user was seeing the back of it, not the front. It's confusing, but all you need to know is that we learned that we had to potentially redig MANY postholes. 

Redig. Many. Postholes.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

If I had a desk to flip, I would have

It was a defeating realization because we were tasked with getting all of the posts in the ground and signs hung before the end of the season. We didn't get our posthole diggers until well into the season, and we didn't get the hardware to hang the signs until we left for the backcountry weeks. Had we gotten the tools/hardware earlier in the season we could have seen this issue long before the last full work day. On top of that, we couldn't even fix things since we were going to be sent to the other crew. We had to repack the signs we had just neatly organized and start to pack our own things and all of the group gear.

UNTIL!

Big Ben decided to try one last hardware store on his way back to the KCC and they HAD THE CORRECT BIT! He came racing back to Noble View to tell us we were back on to hang signs the next day. Hallelujah!

Post with new signs

We knew we wouldn't be able to hang all of the signs; there's something like 15 miles of trail and we could only carry so many signs at a time. The signs we packed away the day before had to be unpacked again and the routes re-planned to hit the most highly used areas. We decided that we would go until we had 4 postholes to re-dig, and we had no idea how long that would be. We could have to re-dig 10% of the posts or 40% or 85%, we had no idea. Each time we were able to get signs on a post we celebrated like little kids. NO REDIGGING!

The morning came and went with only one post needing to be re-dug, and we were going to revisit it later and do all the digging in one shot. It was going pretty well, and it was nice to just hike around and do pretty mindless work. 

UNTIL!

After lunch. We planned our next route and decided to start at the post furthest away and work our way back. We had hiked maybe 2 miles so far and were feeling good, so the mile hike down to that post was pretty easy. UNTIL! We realized that the signs didn't sit on the post right, meaning it had to be relocated.

"This cannot be happening"

Our options were to not hang the signs and carry three extra signs around with us for the remainder of the day, or put them on how they should be and come back to re-dig the posthole at the end of the day. We decided to put the signs on and come back, adding another two miles (with tools) to a ~5-6 mile day. We were exhausted by the end of the second half of the day, especially since we had already re-dug one post hole, so having to revisit what we called the "Death Post" was a real punch in the face. It ended up being a 10 hour day, but it was a productive one.

Post to be relocated. User would walk up to see the back of the sign

After relocation

Friday was supposed to just be packing up and leaving Noble View, but instead we had to go fix one more post. THE FINAL POSTHOLE. It didn't take long, thankfully, and we were on the road at a decent time. I was and still am bummed that we weren't able to complete the project, but I got to the point where I was satisfied with the fact that we did as much as we could with the time and tools we had. It's frustrating to know that if we had the tools/hardware much earlier in the season like we were supposed to we could have finished. Such is life.

Tools

The last workday ended with a deep clean of our van, group gear, and tools. It was weird to know that it was the last day and not have it feel like it. I guess the end never feels like the end until it comes and goes.