Hitch 2 North Zone Trails, Hitch Lead: Stephanie Members: Kyle, Jason, Jenna

Dear Diary,
We survived! All four of us managed to make it through our second hitch! We were doing trail work on the Wagon Hammer Trail, which was the way Lewis and Clark adventured through hundreds of years prior. Our crew was pretty excited because although we were in backcountry territory, we were packed in by The Back Country Horse men so we did not have to haul in all our equipment. It wound up being 98 F so the fact that mules were carrying our packs, tools, and food was just delightful! To say the least! The Forest Service was there to show us what needed to be done and help guide us through the work. This is a trail meant for horses so our first project was to fill in two large dips to make the trail even. We used rocks from the upslope and from where we were cutting in the bench to make the tread wider to fill in the dips then covered it with dirt. This is called a retaining wall which adds stability to the tread. This was one of the only parts of the trail we worked on that was in shade so it was hard to leave this spot! One of our other main priorities was digging post holes for the new signs to be put up that mark the trail. Once we installed the posts, we built up a cairn around it to prevent cattle from using it as a scratch post. This proved to be quite a challenge at times because rocks large enough for the base of the cairn were few and far between. For the whole duration of our hitch we were quite a sight for sore eyes! We were all covered with dirt, mosquito bites, and sweat scrambling up and down hills that were coated with cow pies, horse poop, and flies. Good times! All together we installed 9 signs and cairns. The rest of our time was spent removing brush, clearing tread, and putting objects and obstacles on game trails to divert attention from them and keep horses and other users on the actual trail. Our crew maintained and restored 3,890 feet of trail; which is amazing! But I don’t think any of us were too sad to leave Wagon Hammer and come back to Moyer for showers and a clean bed! Till the next adventure…….