For the second part of my second hitch I was moved to a different crew that was placed in Tonto. Originally I was supposed to spend 4 days in Sedona, have 2 off days in Flagstaff, then go back to Sedona for 4 more days. On Saturday after my first 4 days I found out that I had to leave for Tonto the next day to join the other crew. I was picked up at 7:00 am on Sunday by a guy named Joe and we made our way to Payson. During the ride I actually found out that Joe was a math teacher in New York before he decided to come to ACE, and he's been here for about a year. It was pretty nice to talk about teacher things with someone again!
The drive to Payson isn't long at all, but this particular day the weather wasn't quite ideal, so it took a little longer than it normally would. There was a ton of fog and some snow that we ran into, which definitely caused some problems once we actually got to the camp site. We were in a suburban so I wasn't too concerned about the road we were driving on to the campsite. It was all uphill and the mud was already like the consistency of clay because it had snowed the night before! We were just outside the campsite when the suburban started to slide off to the side and eventually straight into the ditch on the side of the road. We were lucky that we were close to the camp so we didn't have to walk much farther!
We decided that we were going to meet the crew who were already at work on the trail, and wait until the end of the day to try and get the car out. We got some snacks and water together and started to hike to meet everyone. It was about an hour long hike with a long, muddy, uphill section right in the beginning. Needless to say the pounds of mud caked onto our boots did nothing to make the hike easier. Once we were on the actual trail though there was no more of the clay mud, and it turned into regular mud and a lot of snow!
Tonto National Forest actually spans a huge part of Arizona, and is one of the largest national forests in the country. This just basically means that the landscape can change dramatically depending where in the forest you are. The Payson Ranger District actually looks like a forest and is full of pines (some places are called forests but don't quite resemble them haha). Last week I was in Coconino National Forest in Sedona, so making the transition from sunny, red, Sedona to snowy, cold, forest was interesting.
When we finally met up with the crew I found that I was working with a couple guys that were on my first crew, Ryan and Loren. My crew leader was named Marlon, and the other people on the crew were Kerri, who lives in my house with me, Amy, Sam, Mike, and Lissy. This was originally an 8 person crew, but I made it 9, which meant just a little less food to go around.
After a long, cold, wet, first day of work we hiked back to camp to try and get the suburban out of the ditch it was in. We tried to collect rocks and branches to place behind and in front of the suburban to see if it could be driven out either way. We basically succeeded in getting the suburban even more stuck in the ditch to the point where getting in the driver side door wasn't an option because it was right up against the side of the ditch. We gave up trying to get the suburban out and instead called Jordan, who works in the office of ACE. He said he was going to come out first thing in the morning to assist us.
The next morning we waited around for Jordan for a bit before we went to work. He showed up a little after 7:00 and we began work trying get the car out. He drove a diesel Ford Excursion up, but the road was so messy that he didn't bother making it all the way up to us. Instead he had brought a grip hoist which is used to moving big rocks. Depending on the size, grip hoists can be used to move up to 5,000 pounds, maybe more. What we did was find a large tree to use as a brace and attached the grip hoist to the tree, and attached the rope to the car. There's a lever on the grip hoist that you use that is supposed to slowly move whatever object its hooked up to forward. As you can imagine it becomes a difficult task regardless of levers, to move such a large object :). A few guys were doing it and really had to get their bodies into it. Unfortunately the shear pins on the device broke. The shear pins are the fail safe mechanism that prevents the user from actually hoisting anything that nearing the maximum that the device is made for. This meant that the grip hoist was useless now, until we got new shear pins.
When Jordan tried to move the excursion up to try out a different method, the Excursion he was in also slipped into the ditch on the side of the road. This made for a comical morning because everything that could go wrong was definitely going wrong. Luckily the ditch that Jordan was in wasn't as deep as the one that Joe got stuck in. We went back to our original plan of placing a ton of rocks in the ditch so Jordan could reverse out of the ditch and back onto the road. We were able to do this successfully, and at which point called it a day for the suburban and just began our hike to work. When we got back at the end of the day we found the suburban was gone, so Jordan and Joe were able to get some shear pins and successfully use the grip hoist. Not, of course, without leaving the muddy road in total shambles.
The work we were doing in Tonto was basically just making drains, which I did a lot of in Coronado. There is really nothing exciting to say about it because it's just moving a lot of dirt around to allow water to easily run off the side of the trail and prevent erosion. Other work we did was brushing, which meant getting rid of branches and such that were kind of protruding into the trail. We worked our way all the way up the trail and to the rim. The "rim" is actually Mogollon Rim, which is HUGE! Here's a little information about it:
http://paysonrimcountry.com/Mountain-Recreation/Natural-Landmarks/Mogollon-Rim
It's actually pretty cool, but the spot we were at didn't have particularly awesome views or anything, but it was still neat to work there.
The last night that we were camping we decided to try and get the van out because the road was still muddy, and we didn't want to be stuck in the morning. The van was parked on an angle already, so we knew it was going to be a challenge. Just as we suspected, we were not able to drive our van out. We had several people trying to push the van up the hill, but it only started to slide sideways. It was at that moment that we realized we really should have tried to get the van out when we had the grip hoist the other day. We started to brainstorm how we were going to accomplish this task because no one wanted to stay an extra day.
The campground we were at was actually a boy scout camp and we found large sheets of plywood like wood that we "borrowed" to put under the van. It took 6 sheets of this wood to place strategically around the van so that it would drive over them. Unlike the first attempt, this method worked wonderfully, and there was no problem at all getting van to drive up the little incline it was on. The one issue that did arise was that one sheet of wood we used splintered. So in order to hide the evidence we broke it to pieces and used it as fire wood. Our fire was MASSIVE that night! It was also really funny watching the boys go crazy jumping on the wood to break it into smaller pieces.
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