Pronounced "Pres-kit". This was my first time in Prescott, but there have been a lot of crews on this trail this year, so for some people it was already their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time, which kind of stinks, even though it is a really pretty place! All week we were unable to have fires at night though because it was very windy! We had a few people's tents blow away during the day lol.
This particular project had 2 crews with 8 people each. I was on a crew with this girl Alex, and a few guys named Dale, Johnny, Noah, Jacob (an American citizen from Denmark), and Lionel who I have worked with before. Our crew leader was a guy named John as well, and on the other crew there was another Jon and Noah, and a Nora and an Ally (a crew leader I had in Sedona). Lots of similar sounds going on this week! The other crew also had a few guys I had worked with before, but there were a lot of new people I was looking forward to getting to know. Because we couldn't have fires at night, we actually backed up our trailers to one another and basically made one big kitchen and put a huge tarp over it to block some wind. It was a tight squeeze when everyone was under there, but still a great bonding experience! This was also another project with no toilets, but lots of great bushes and rocks!
The work we were doing in Prescott this week was just building a lot of check steps. Check steps and water bars prevent water from carrying sediment further down the trail, and the sediment will be deposited before the check step and help build up the tread on the trail. The first 2 days I was working with a girl named Nora on a particularly large check step that was incredibly frustrating. It was a lot of chiseling and adjusting with rock bars to make sure the rocks had good points of contact.
The hike out to the work site was a couple miles and took about an hour, and after Nora and I finished I was moved further down the trail, basically to the ending point which was 3 miles out. Myself and a few others worked for a couple days doing a couple more check steps. This location was sweet though because we were right by the little stream. If you walked down the hill and up the steam (which was just damp sand) you reached an area that actually had some nice little pools, so I would spend my lunch breaks with my feet in the water! Finding a place to pee in Prescott was also pretty cool because you would go on an adventure climbing up this boulders and then have a view of Granite Mountain, which was very cool looking! Going to the bathroom is definitely a great excuse for going on mini adventures during the work day!
Although the work we were doing was the same (check steps) Prescott looked super cool with all the boulders balancing on each other like someone just dumped them out of a bag. Some big boulders looked like you could just tap them and they'd tip! We were also in an area that had burned and it reminded me of the Lion King lol. It was a pretty open looking area with lots of creepy dead trees, but really pretty, purple flowers, and awesome rocks! The hike was difficult in a couple areas, but probably the prettiest hike I have done so far. You could also see Humphrey's Peak (Flagstaff) from our trail!
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