Hitch #6 - We Are The Pack Team

Beautiful sunrise skyline in Mt. Adams Wilderness
Group around the campfire with Mt. Adams in the background

"What Did The Fish Say When It Ran Into A Wall?" Answer at bottom.

In order to get ready for our first hitch up north, I ended up working for part of one of my days off. Somehow there is always a person or two who has to work on our days off because we have to grocery shop and then get all the food organized, etc. Seems like they would give us an extra day for that but no such luck.
7:30 a.m. Monday morning - personal gear ready, meet pack team with group gear. Instead of 2 mules, we had 3 but still not enough to carry all our group gear which meant....the team and 1 volunteer carrying in a tool or two each. No big deal, right?
Our new sponsor, Dana, made us work after hiking 6 miles straight up an awfully rutted trail. Some areas steeper then others and some rutted out more then other areas. The team is not used to doing work on the trail after traveling to our site whether we drive or hike so I was not prepared for doing some trail work. Dana had to leave early the next morning and wanted to show us how to put in check dams. Check dams are used to slow water down the flow of water coming down the trail. That way preventing erosion problems. The week on the mountain consisted of putting in a lot of check dams. Check dams are made by finding a mostly flat top, thin rock, digging a trench the length and depth of the rock, securing the rock with setter rocks and then filling the rest in with dirt. Other projects that were done for the week was some tread definition, water bars using rocks or logs.
On Friday, I hiked out to meet Stephanie who is the volunteer coordinator and was resupplying us with food for the next couple of days and also hiking in 6 new volunteers from Envirocorps. They do trail work in Portland for the Lower Columbia Center and are not used to backcountry, camping, trail work on the mountain, etc.
With Stephanie came bad news. The packers had canceled which meant that we would be packing out not just our personal gear but all the group gear which included: tools, food, garbage, cooler, and on and on.
John, who was leader for the week because Karlena was on vacation leading a college group in the sisters wilderness in Central Oregon, wanted to hike out on Sunday. Saturday night it rained all night. Sunday morning we packed up and hiked the 6 miles down in the drizzle, muddy trail. I only managed to fall 3 times and slip twice as many as I fell. One of the ridiculous things that our sponsor had us carry up that she thought would be useful for moving rocks, was a dolly. The dolly turned out to be a pain in the a--. The dolly was wider then the actual trail which made it extremely difficult to push or pull along the trail.
Despite having to be our own pack team, the week was not all that bad. We were in a yet another beautiful setting, great volunteers, especially Letha (she just got back about 2 months ago from being in the Peacecorps in the Philippines for 2 years.) By the time we had cleaned all the gear and stuff, my crew was exhausted. Of course, we were exhausted at the beginning of the hitch. Good thing we had 5 days off before the next hitch.

Answer to joke: Dam (ha ha)