Hitch 4 -- Hard Work Pays Off

Hitch Summary

“Always you have been told that work is a curse and labor a misfortune, but I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, and in keeping yourself with labor you are in truth loving life, and to love life through labor is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.” - Kahlil Gibran

The crew’s penultimate hitch found us returning to the same location as our previous hitch for setting up base camp. Base camp set up was quick and smooth as the familiar tasks had become second nature. By early afternoon the crew was on the trail and repairing more of the rocky tread located in the meadow just beyond our camp. We were visited by Amber, a former firefighter and current Fuels Technician who talked to us a bit about the work she was doing with our trail to help determine plans for fire control in the district.

On Tuesday the crew hiked out to the wilderness boundary and began repairing tread from the boundary and working toward camp. It rained multiple times during the work day but temperatures remained comfortable and the crew maintained good spirits. By Wednesday we had developed a plan of attack for the week’s work, with John flagging high priority sections of the trail to concentrate on first and intentions of connecting said sections after they were complete. This strategy worked well and progress was rewardingly quick.

Thursday found us down by two members as Andy experienced some medical issues and he and John went into town for treatment. Andy’s pain turned out to be nothing too serious and easily correctable, which came as a relief to the entire crew. Despite the labor deficit, the crew managed to put in a surprisingly strong effort and very little was lost in the way of progress on the trail. By the end of Saturday all of the flagged sections were completed and on Sunday we began connecting the tread in between.

The weather for Hitch 4 was decidedly chillier than the previous hitch, characterized by overcast, windy mornings and nighttime temperatures in the low 40s and high 30s. Afternoons were comfortably warm in the mid to high 70s, getting progressively hotter toward the weekend with Sunday being our hottest day.

While working on tread for the entirety of the hitch was physically exhausting, we were rewarded by our own quick progress and the sight of multiple visitors using our trail, including a couple of horse riders for whom our tread proved to be necessarily durable. By the end of the hitch we had repaired 5644 feet of quality tread.

Work Summary