First Week at Big Bend!

So it turns out that it’s pretty hard to write a blog entry here. Here’s my best shot.

We got here not last Wednesday, but the Wednesday before. We stopped in Alpine to get groceries on the way in. We have a much bigger food budget than AmeriCorps usually has because we're getting money from the National Park Service as well. We didn't do much else that day. We set up our campsite, which isn't really all that bad. We're in the basin of the Chisos Mountains, which means that there are mountains litterally 360 degrees all around us. The trail crew lives in a bunkhouse right next to our camp site. My tentmate Amy and I accidentally got a really small tent the first night, while Marie and Scott, who both had tents to themselves, and the tent we were keeping extra stuff in were all much bigger tents. Lindsey and Erin also got one of the smaller tents. The second day, Marie switched with Amy and me and Lindsey and Erin took over the stuff tent. That first day we also had money left over from our travel budget so we got to eat dinner at the lodge, half a mile from our camp site.

On Thursday, our supervisor Colin (who was a Team Leader in Denver two years ago) took us on the Window Trail. I'll post a picture later, but the Window is a really cool part of the mountains where two mountains form a V that you can see through. The Window Trail is 5 miles round trip. We hiked to the end, then on the way back did a little trail brushing. This is just where you use loppers (like pruning shears, but bigger) or a hand saw to cut away any overgrown plants that are coming into the trail. There wasn't a lot that needed to be done on this trail, but Colin just wanted us to practice using the tools.

We didn’t do any work on Friday. Colin and Alex, another member of the trail crew, just took us around to different places to show us around. First we went to a nature trail. It was just a really short trail that had signs about what plants were what. We weren’t there for long because we had to get to the visitor center for a talk with Don, the park geologist. It was really interesting. He told us about like the entire history of the park’s geology, back to when dinosaurs roamed Big Bend. He also told us about Santa Elena Canyon. You know plate tectonics? This canyon was formed by a plate being tilted, then part of it breaking off and dropping. We then got to go to the actual Santa Elena Canyon. It was GORGEOUS. It was also fun to get to go to the Rio Grande. The river was really narrow through the canyon. I could have thrown a rock at Mexico if I wanted to. There’s like a mile-long trail that kind of goes into the canyon, which provided some really nice views. That canyon is definitely one of my favorite places in the park so far. After the canyon, we went to the ruins of two houses. One, the Dorgan house, had a fireplace made of petrified wood. That fireplace and one wall were the only parts left of the house. After those houses, we went to Tuff Canyon. It wasn’t near the river, but it was still pretty cool. We hiked up to an overlook above it, then hiked down into the canyon itself, then hiked back up to another overlook. It was a pretty nice day, just driving around and hiking different parts of the park.

Saturday was our first day of WORK. The Blue Creek Trail is a 5.5-mile (one way) trail, most of which is in a wash. I’m not actually sure what “wash” means, but that’s what Colin and Alex called the hellish part of this trail. I think the wash is just where the creek used to be. Now, it’s just gravel. Thick sandy gravel. Thick sandy gravel that goes on a slight incline the whole time. Colin’s plan was to hike all the way out to the end of where he wanted us to work, then work our way back. Luckily he didn’t need us to go the whole 5.5 miles, but we went about four miles. Four miles hiking uphill in sandy gravel is really pretty hard. There are times when the trail went up out of the wash, but the wash was the majority. And the times when the trail went out of the wash, it was usually a much steeper incline. Yeah, it was hard. It took a good part of the morning just to get there, leaving not much time for actual work. The work itself was just brushing like we did on the Window Trail. The main thing that needed to be removed from the Blue Creek Trail was Cat Claw, a devil plant. It’s just a thorn bush but the thorns literally look like cat claws, with a thicker base that curves into a VERY sharp point. Once you’ve cut a branch off, if you let it grab you, it doesn’t let go without a fight. You get one claw out and three more grab on. Needless to say, we all have arms covered in scratches. Most of us even got a few scratches on our legs through our army-style uniform pants. Saturday through Wednesday were all spent on that trail (we have weird work weeks, remember?). Obviously, the hike wasn’t four miles every day. The hike got shortened by whatever work we had already done, but it kept being pretty darn hard. Especially because we had to work in our steel toes but no one wanted to hike in them, so most of us wore hiking boots to get there and carried our heavy steel toes in our backpacks. It was a pretty tough trail, but we managed to get the whole thing brushed in our remaining five days of work that week.

Last Wednesday was our last day of work for the week so we decided to go out in Terlingua, the 600-person town 30 miles from the park. There are three bars in town and we went to two of them. The Starlight Theatre used to be a theatre but now it’s a bar and restaurant. The stage is still there and we thought they probably have live music there sometimes, which would be awesome. We then went to La Kiva, a kind of underground bar where Alex had told us there would be an open mic that night. Colin and Alex told us about how open mic at La Kiva was a great chance to see some desert hippies. Who would say no to that? It was pretty cool. The people who played were all pretty good, but we all got tired pretty early. We were used to being in bed by like 9pm at the latest because that’s when it had been getting dark and COLD at night, so no one wants to do anything but curl up in their tent. So we were all tired by like 10:30 and left.

Thursday was our day to make the two-hour trek into Alpine to do laundry and get groceries. It turned into a pretty ridiculous day. Everyone had different places they wanted to go and different things they wanted to do, so everyone was scattered. We finally got everything done then moved on to grocery shopping. We have a pretty big food budget because the National Park Service supplements our AmeriCorps budget, so we have $1600 for every two weeks. We had like 6 or 7 carts full of food and the total was like $1560. That’s pretty much an absurd amount of food, but we all eat a lot. Most days when we get home from work, everyone heads straight for the food cabinet and just eats for a while. We all took pictures of the back of the cargo truck filled with grocery bags, the as-tall-as-a-person receipt, then the floor filled with grocery bags when we unloaded them at home. It was insane.

On Friday, everyone decided to hike up the the top of Casa Grande, an interesting-looking mountain behind our campsite. Colin had told us that if you start up the Lost Mine Trail and take a right onto a “beaten path” at trail marker number 10, you can get to the top. Also, at least a third of the path up, maybe even half, was SUPER STEEP and the ground was just loose rocks. You have to just get down as low as you can and use your hands and feet to scramble to the top. There were a few times where I seriously considered just turning around and going back down because I didn’t think I could go up anymore without falling off the mountain, but I did it! The view at the top was AMAZING. You could see for miles and miles. Colin had told us that to get down, the best way was to just ski down the rocks. I thought that was probably a good way for me to fall off the mountain, so I decided to ski in like a squatting position, with my weight on my feet but my hands on the ground to push myself along. It was actually pretty fun. The only problem is that I ended up with a GIANT hole in the seat of my AmeriCorps pants, which I decided to wear that day instead of my own pants. So that will be fun to stitch up later, but it was totally worth it to not feel like I was going to fall off a mountain. It was a pretty awesome day.

I know I’m not caught up with the current days, but I’m about to leave my internet source so I’m just going to go ahead and post what I have written. Yay for Texas!