September 4th trailwork

I drove up to the Slate Creek Road in the late afternoon on the 3rd.  I wanted to find a nice dispersed camping spot on the Slate Creek Road, and I drove by my ultimate camping location to check out the length of the road.  According to my map the road dead-ends and there are some old mines nearby.  I'm not really sure if it dead-ends or not, because it finally became so rough that I decided I'd better just turn around.  I could see the powerlines on the Canadian side, so I know the road gets very close to the border.  I settled on a camping spot that was a little closer to the road than I would have liked (although as it turned out, only one vehicle drove by, and that wasn't until 7:30 the next morning).  It was also very close to Slate Creek, so I slept very well with the sound of running water just a few feet away.

After I set up camp I got out each of the saws to test them out on a fallen tree near my camp.  I have never used any of the saws I brought along for the trailwork this weekend.  I had two one-person saws; one was given to me by my dad, and the other I picked up at a thrift store for $25.  I also had the Mountaineers' two-person crosscut with me.  It had been hanging on the wall in the chalet for years, and I finally decided to take it out of the chalet before somebody stole it.  I also had a feeling that it might be usable--it was covered with a thick layer of soot and dust, but it didn't have any broken teeth.

As it turned out, all of the saws were in great working order.  I finally decided to carry my thrift store saw and the Mountaineers' saw for the trailwork.  Both still have a little rust on them (I'm working on getting it all off), but they did great on the trees we cut.  Additionally, I had my bow saw, my fano saw (a gift from my uncle--Aaron "stole" it for the day because all he had was his Sven saw), my log carriers which we did not use, my draw knife which I now know I need to sharpen, my hatchet, and a wedge which we did not need to use.  I stopped on my drive up to buy the wedge for just in case--the first place I stopped, a farm supply store, didn't carry them.  The second place I stopped, in Ione, seemed a little confused about what a wedge was.  And I thought that Pend O'Reille county was known for logging!

It turned out that it was just Aaron & myself for the trailwork, so we weren't able to get the entire trail cleared.  Still, it was pretty good for two people to clear nearly two miles of trail in just one day.  We got the worst section, and now we have another project for sometime in the future.  We decided to quit around 3pm, and as if on cue, that's when we started to hear thunder in the distance.  The hike out was easy on our newly cleared trail, and then we checked out the Metaline Falls street fair & went swimming (or in my case, iced my knees) in the Pend O'Reille River.  I'm going to miss doing this sort of thing on a regular basis; next week, school starts.  My life is about to be governed by bells again.  I'm hoping I can escape town to do a little more trailwork this fall, but most things are going to be on hold until next summer.  Oh, well.  It has been one very good summer!  

Thursday, September 2, 2010

I am still so tired, and I haven't hiked in two days now!  Instead I met my new nephew yesterday, and I have been trying to make up for lost time in the garden and with my neglected housework.  However, the hiking break is over--there are trailwork plans in the works for the weekend.  It will be my final chance to really get out & play before school starts next week.  Maybe we'll be lucky and find some more huckleberries, too!

We'll be working on the Slate Creek trail, which is one of the trails I hiked for Hike-a-Thon.  This is the one where somebody complained on the trailhead register that he couldn't possibly get over all of the downfall and couldn't even do the hike.  I didn't think that it was all that bad, but I like the opportunity to take out the crosscut saw.  The trail is only 4.2 miles long, so I hope we can finish the whole thing on Saturday.

Funny conversation at practice today:  We were doing strength after today's run.  It was probably around 9am.  We started to do the iron bridge.  One of the girls said "How long do we do this one?"  I replied, "I'm not timing it; we'll just do this until I get too tired to do it anymore."  To this Mariya said, "I have to leave at 10AM, Weiler."  I still laugh every time I think about it.  :)