More Catching Up

A couple days after Green Scene, most of the team went to Boquillas Canyon. I went again since I didn't get to go into the canyon when I went with Lindsey and Davis. Obviously, it was beautiful. I'm at the public library to get internet right now on my current project, and it is apparently not letting me upload pictures. So I guess no pictures this time. Sorry! This post almost seems pointless without pictures. When we were at the canyon, the regular trail ends at this really pretty spot where you can see pretty far in either direction, but we found another little social trail that went even farther into the canyon. (A social trail is one that was not intentionally built, but formed over time from multiple people walking the same path over and over.) It was really narrow and went through all these bamboo stalks. It felt like we were foraging through the jungle. It was worth it though, because at the end of it was a nice little area that was the perfect size for us all to just sit by the river and look at the water.

After that weekend was our first real hitch working on Emory Peak. (A hitch is what the trail crew calls their work weeks. Nine days on, five days off, remember?) I can't remember if I've already explained it, but the main project for the trail crew right now is building a new trail to Emory Peak, the highest peak in the park. The old trail is horrible. It pretty much just goes straight up the mountain which makes it extremely steep. It also means that when it rains, the water just pours down the trail and erodes it. The new trail winds around the mountain more, so it is not as steep and is also better for the land. The crew's packer, Joseph, had agreed to bring up all of our food, our tents, and our sleeping bags on the mules, but we would have to carry everything else we wanted up there with us ourselves. I somehow managed to fit everything in the new backpack that I bought in Austin, which is quite a bit smaller than the yellow one I've had since 6th grade that it was replacing (I guess backpacks have to break eventually, right?). The new backpack is much more comfortable than my old one, but it was HEAVY. The hike up to where we would camp on Emory is somewhere between 4 and 6 miles, obviously uphill the whole way. Usually STEEP uphill. I'm not going to lie, the hike up there with a super heavy backpack was fairly miserable. When the trail crew is working up there, they live in/around Boot Cabin near Boot Canyon. They usually sleep either in tents near the cabin or just outside if the weather is good. They had a campsite near there for us, on the Colima Trail. We hiked to the cabin, then dropped off our stuff at our campsite. Then Colin took us to hike another 5 or 6 miles. Seriously. We set off along the new trail to see what the rest of the crew was working on then went up to the peak. Since only a small section of the new trail is ready, most of the hike to the peak was on the old trail. I'm not a very experienced hiker, but even I could tell that they were doing the right thing by building a new trail. The old one is just covered in rocks and is full of steps that are a foot or more high. I fell way behind the rest of the group because it was so hard. When I got to the almost peak, Amy and Marie were sitting and resting. To get to the very top, you have to do some rock climbing. They didn't think they had it in them right then to climb up there right then, and neither did I. The rest of the team was already up there. While we were sitting there, I casually said "I wonder how much I'll regret not going to the top." And Amy said "That's it, we're going up. Come on!" I love her. So up we went. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It's kind of fun when you have to look for places to put your hands and feet. More fun than hiking miles and miles of relentless uphills, I'd say. It was gorgeous at the top. As it's the highest peak in the park, you have an unobstructed view for miles all around you. (Except for the large ugly solar panel that was up there, but let's not talk about that.) We got some pretty nice pictures up there which I will post at some point. The climb down wasn't even that hard. I felt a little like a cat stuck in a tree for a minute, but I found the path I used to come up and just went on down.

The next day we worked on a campsite on the old trail that was closing. We pretty much just had to make it so that no one would even want to walk around there, let alone camp there. First we would till the soil then plant some prickly pears and agaves. To plant an agave you have to dig up the whole plant and put it in a hole in the ground, but to plant a prickly pear all you have to do is cut off a pad on an existing plant and lay it down on the ground. That's it. Just from that, the pad can take root and grow a whole new plant. Then we had to spread duff everywhere. Duff is like a mixture of fertile dirt and dead leaves and stuff. You have to go out into the trees to find it, fill a dirt bag with it, then bring it back to spread. We also went out and found a bunch of dead branches and stuff to spread everywhere. The hope is that eventually, vegetation will begin to grow eventually, and it will be like that campsite never existed.

It started to rain on our hike back to our campsite after work that day. Camping in the rain is not much fun. We had to cook dinner, eat, and make our lunches for the next day, all in the rain. Colin brought us a tent rain fly to string up between trees so we had a little bit of shelter, but we still got wet. Everyone went in their tents for the night at like 6:30, as soon as possible after dinner. I'm sure everyone read or something for a while before actually going to bed, but I think we all got a lot of sleep that night. Amy and I also discovered that our rain fly leaked, thus continuing the saga of the Crappy Tent. Fabulous.

On the 5th of those 9 days, Colin had a surprise for us. We wouldn't be going to work that day. He was "teaching us how to mellow." By this, he meant taking us on a leisurely hike to the Northeast Rim and the South Rim, which have some of the best views in the park. It wasn't as relaxing for me because almost everyone else on the team hikes much faster than I do, but it was still really nice. We took LOTS of breaks. We would hike to a cool view and sit for a while. Then hike to another cool view and sit for a while. Lunch lasted about an hour and a half that day. Colin said the goal of the day was to "mellow as hard as possible." During an hour-long break in the afternoon, he taught us to do a few of the acrobalance tricks that he and Laura did at Green Scene. It was a really nice day.

The day after that, Tabitha and I were sent to work with Julie and Matt from the trail crew. They were working on rip rap rocks. No, I don't know why it's called that. Rip rap rocks are used to prevent erosion on places in the trail where erosion is especially bad. Rip rap rocks are like big flat rocks that you install in the trail. The end result looks kind of like cobblestone. What Tabitha and I were sent to do was find small wedge-shaped rocks that Julie and Matt can use to go between the big rocks and make them really tight. Some of it was a matter of looking around and finding wedges, but most of the day was spent gathering an armload of rocks and then sitting with a rock hammer trying to make wedges. It was nice for a while. It wasn't too hard physically, we got to sit a lot of the time, and Tabitha is fun to talk to. However, do this all day, and you are likely to go a little crazy. Like we did. We eventually realized how much we felt like cave people. We were pretty slap happy by the end of the day. We were just laughing at everything. We were pretty much by ourselves, but later when we met up with the rest of the team, they said they could hear us laughing. It was ridiculous.

And that's all I have time for right now. This might go a little faster now that I know I can't really post pictures yet. If you are my facebook friend, you can look at the pictures tagged of me (that button under my profile picture). You can also look at my videos. I posted the slide show thing we made for our debrief presentation. Enjoy!

I Miss You, Big Bend

So here I am back in Denver. I guess I'll kind of try to pick back up where I left off, but it'll be hard. We'll see how it goes.

Spring break in Austin was pretty cool. The only bad part was that on the first morning we were there, Lindsey hurt her foot pretty badly when we were walking to breakfast. She was stepping off a curb and her sandal got caught, but her foot kept going. She still walked all around the city with us, just a little slower. We came back to the park on Monday after spring break, and Lindsey wasn't able to go to work on Tuesday because she couldn't do the hike to our work site. Scott took her to the doctor in Alpine on Wednesday and we found out some horrible news. Her foot was broken and she was being sent back to Denver to work with a team from another unit who was living on campus and working at a school. We were all really sad that she had to leave and so was she.

That day while they were at the doctor was pretty interesting for the rest of us. It was a service learning day for us as well as for the whole trail crew. (They don't do service learning like we do, but they all came with us.) We took a tour with Tom, the park archaeologist, of an area called Indian Head. He showed us all kinds of evidence of people living there many many years ago. There were several pictographs and petroglyphs on the huge boulders around.

Do you see the little hand prints under the circle thing? Tom said they were probably made by like a 10-year-old. Crazy!

The next day, Scott assigned me to have another service learning day with Lindsey. I think it was mostly just to get her some hours since she had to miss work after spring break. Davis ended up coming with us because he had hurt his knee the day before. The three of us went to Boquillas Canyon. It was really pretty. (Surprising, huh?) To get from the parking area into the actual canyon was like a mile hike which unfortunately Lindsey and Davis couldn't do with their injuries. There were a couple of overlook things that we could drive to so we were still able to see some of it and get some good pictures. At one of the overlooks was a bunch of crafts set up on rocks. There were signs saying that they were made in Boquillas, Mexico with a list of prices for all the crafts. The sign said that buying them (putting money in the plastic containers next to the rocks) would benefit Boquillas schools. Unfortunately, none of us had money with us, but the things were really pretty.

That is obviously the Rio Grande behind us, with Mexico on the other side. We even got to see someone crossing the river back over to Mexico on a horse, most likely after dropping off more crafts or collecting money or something. It was a really nice day. We just drove around the Boquillas Canyon area and looked at pretty scenery then had lunch in Rio Grande Village. (The village isn't as cool as it sounds. It's just another visitor center and a store. But it was still nice.)

The day after that was our Alpine day. Alpine days, as I've mentioned, are just pretty horrible. Too much going on. And that day was even worse because I had my team leader phone interview scheduled for that day. (Yes, I applied to be a team leader for next year.) I thought it went pretty well. The Unit Leaders from all four units were on the phone but I didn't really feel nervous or anything.

Saturday April 10 was an all-day event in Terlingua called Green Scene. Terlingua has been trying to do a lot more recycling and move toward sustainability and the Green Scene was kind of a celebration of that. There were demonstrations on things like solar ovens and composting, and a lot of locals were selling their art and food. Terlingua only has like five or six hundred people, but a lot of them seem to be artists. All of the local art I've seen is really good. The Green Scene was really fun. I think probably the whole town was there as well as people from surrounding communities. One of the highlights was a demonstration by the local acro-balance yoga class. Colin, our supervisor, and Laura, another member of the trail crew, are part of this class. They were doing some crazy stuff!


Alex, a member of the trail crew, had given us a brilliant idea. There's a "camping hostel" in Terlingua, so we should just bring our sleeping bags and stuff and sleep there so no one would have to drive back (beer is a pretty important part of life in Terlingua) and so we could stay out as long as we want (the curfew for the van is midnight which means we would have to leave at 11:15 to get back in time). Such a good idea! At the end of the night, we slept beneath the stars in the campground. Stars in Terlingua/Big Bend are probably the prettiest I've seen. In the middle of the night, I woke up to a strange pattering sound that I didn't recognize at first. Then I realized it was rain. Only a little sprinkling. How ironic, that the first time we decide to sleep without tents in the desert is the first time it rains. It only lasted a few minutes so it was kind of refreshing. In the morning we had breakfast at a really good little cafe next to Starlight, then went back to the park.

Well I guess I might as well go ahead and post what I have so far. This is going to take a while.