We love new things and seeing different parts of the beautiful forest that we get to work in every day. This was an exciting hitch because we got to do everything that we love! We spent the first day of the hitch preparing and packing because we were getting horse and mule packed into the Brothers Wilderness on the Duckabush Trail. This was the first time that we had the opportunity to work with pack animals since we started our crew, so we were all really excited (and of course happy that we didn’t have to carry all of the gear and tools we would need for the next 8 days for 6 miles over Big Hump).
So, we got packed in to our campsite and scouted the project ahead of us. Our project was to build a 32’ long and 4’ high rock wall at the approach to a steep section of the trail. It seemed like a daunting task, but we were excited to play with rocks for the rest of the hitch. We spent long days moving rocks, uncovering buried rocks, digging rocks out of holes, picking rocks, hauling rocks, crushing rocks, and artfully placing rocks into position. After the wall itself was constructed, we had to fill in the tread up to the height of the rocks. Fish estimated that we moved over 6 tons of rock to complete the entire project. He is good at math.
After we completed the wall and filled in the tread, we spent our final days of the hitch brushing parts of the trail between our rock wall and the national park boundary line and doing some small tread projects to help out the pack animals that use the trail.
We had a great hitch and enjoyed our time in the wilderness.
6 tons of rock moved
536 service hours
