I'm finally all caught up! My most recent project was in Dixie National Forest, the Pine Valley ranger district. I was super excited to get put on this project because I have never been to Utah! I was on a crew with Nora, Dale, Jamie, Noah, who were in Prescott with me, and Neil who was in Sedona with me. We also had a guy named Cal as our crew leader, and another guy Wyatt. Wyatt and Cal were already in Utah, so those of us that were not were driven up on Tuesday. ACE has a house in Utah that's actually really cute looking and it's in a town called Hurricane (pronounced Hurri-kin lol). I was told we might be staying in Utah for our off days, but still forgot things like soap lol. The other people I was with were not told anything and were not prepared at all to stay longer than our project time. I was also told that this project was going to be up to 10 miles of hiking a day! Which was making me kind of nervous, but it turned out to not be that much at all!
We left for Pine Valley on Wednesday morning with Jason, a Utah ACE manager. He helped us take some cubies of water and personal gear up because we did not have a trailer. Dixie wasn't that far from Hurricane so we arrived around 10:00 and were able to work most of the day. We were working on 2 trails that met in the middle, basically forming a big loop. We started right at the trail head of the first trail and began working our way up. The objective was to open the corridor, which meant we were cutting bushes and trees that were in the trail, or a few feet off the trail. Both trails we were on were definitely a little old and had not been maintained in a while because the brush was thick! We had 2 chainsaws (Wyatt and Cal were the sawyers) and 1 brush cutter, which was a lot like a weed wacker lol. There were some straps that you wore with the brush cutter so you could clip it to your waist as opposed to totally carrying it while you hiked which was nice. I used it the first day, and it was pretty fun! The rest of the days I was lopping (cutting the bushes and things with loppers) and swamping (following behind a sawyer and throwing what they cut off the trail).
The hike to the work site every day was probably the hardest hike I've done so far. We work through close to a mile everyday, so each day the hike got longer. It was literally uphill both ways because we would hike up this mountain sides, then hike back down, and have to hike back up at the end of the day. A few days we got one mile of work done, and were hiking up and down several times! The hike during the day while we were working wasn't hard though because you move so slowly when you're swamping or lopping. No matter where you were on the trail though you had an amazing view! It was either the mountain behind you or canyons and mesas in front of you in the distance!
While we were working we ran into a few creeks which was an awesome break for our day! It would get pretty toasty during the day, so when we saw a creek we would dip our bandanas and heads in it! There were a few that had some little waterfalls you could bend down and get to. At one creek Dale walked up it a little bit and found 2 waterfalls that flowed into each other! One was about 4 feet off the ground and we just stood and dipped our heads in it. The other was up and you had to climb a little bit to see it. The rocks were pretty slick though otherwise we would have tried to hop on up and into the little pool that fed into the lower waterfall. The water so cold too and would actually take my breath away!
The unfortunate thing about the area we were working in though was that we had to watch out for ticks! No one got bit though, which is good! There were also a lot of bees where we were camped, and there was a literally a Bee Tree that was thing huge, old ponderosa that was hollow on the inside and home to a bunch of honey bees. There was a little trail leading to it right from our campsite. It had also survived a few fires and lightning strikes! The highest points on the tree were its branches because the very top was burnt off by lightning. There were also a lot of turkeys around and we were always hearing them! A few birds were pretty annoying at night too and would start chirping at 8:30 every night, almost non stop lol. There were a few nights we had fires, but because Utah is an hour ahead it didn't start getting dark until around 8:30, so some of us would stay up until it was dark because it was weird to go to bed when it was so light out!
This project my tent zipper broke so I couldn't close my tent all the way, which wasn't as much of an issue as I thought it would be. Surprisingly, little critters did not find their way into my tent! One of my water bottles also started leaking which stunk! Remember how I said we also didn't have a trailer for stuff? No one came to help us pack up and leave on Wednesday when we were done so we had to find a way to get all our food boxes, tools, and personal gear into the van, otherwise Cal would have to make 2 trips. We managed though and were able to consolidate a lot of stuff, but it was still a tight squeeze!
When we got back to Hurricane my crew hung out for awhile before attempting to shower because there is only one shower in the house and there was another crew of 10 people. We hung out across the street in the grass. It feels like the perfect summer weather in Utah, it's absolutely beautiful! We ended up deciding to do what Nora likes to call "stink and drink" where we go out to our crew dinner without showering or changing, so we did that! Well tried to, its hard to find a drink in Utah! And you have to order food with your beer, its weird lol. After we ate we went back to the house and later that night we were hanging out in a small barn corral of a tractor museum that was next door. We aren't allowed to drink on ACE property, but the museum allows us to use the barn. It was nice to have a place to just hang out and chill outside of the house since there aren't any bars around lol.
I'm heading back to Dixie on the same trails next week for 4 days. It's going to be a back country project which will be my first! I'll also be with Cal, Wyatt, and Noah, along with a new guy named Kyle who I haven't met yet. The 2 trails are about 10 miles long total, and we went in about 3 miles on each trail, so there are a few miles left to do in the middle where the trails meet, so I will be doing the same work. Because it's back country we have to hike in all our food, tools, and gear, as opposed to just driving up to a campsite. This will be another one with no bathrooms! For those of you wondering, when there aren't bathrooms the proper way to do your business is to dig a hole (cat hole) about 8 inches deep. It's all apart of Leave No Trace. And for those of you REALLY curious, sometimes when there's no toilet paper people use rocks. Yeah, that's a real thing haha. Anyways, I don't know where I'll be for the last 4 days of this project. It's my LAST PROJECT! I can't believe it's already here! Here's hoping it's a great one (and I know it will be :) ).
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