Hitch 1 Fencing, Hitch Lead: Kyle Members: Jess, Jenna, Stephanie

Our hitch involved two seperate back-country construction projects with the Forest Service. Our first week, we set out to build a cattle fense from barbed-wire and air-dropped fense posts from the previous season on recently aquired land within the Salmon National Forest. The project involved working in riparian areas far from designated roads or trails. To get to our worksite, we forded a river upon an old cattle fense, the water beneath us swollen with run-off from the winter season. Each intern had either heavy gear, a spool of wire, or barbed wire stretchers strapped to their back, meandering across the cattle fense to get to the foot of the mountain that was our work site. While crossing, I couldn't help but note that in all the fenses I had built, never did I have to climb a mountain or scale over a raging river. This was the most exciting fense I had ever built. We placed 200 feet of new fense and repaired over 500 feet of old fense on the first day, before finally getting washed out that evening by rain. The second project for our hitch consisted of building a single-stringer bridge across a waterway using lumber harvested from a snag using a cross-cut saw, along with benching and trail maintainaince work. 1500 feet of trail was re-benched and maintained. 450 feet of fresh tred was established.