Hitch lead: Stephanie Kopfman
Member: Ben Dunphey
This hitch was an interesting one, right from the beginning. We were supposed to meet up with a group of interns who were serving in the Salmon-Challis as Wilderness Interns. We had called the night before to find out where they were camped so we could meet them and found out that they were camped up by a series of lakes that was 6.5 miles in from the trailhead. Knowing this Steph K. and I packed as lightly as possible for this hitch. We brought the bare minimum for clothes and only the food we needed. In addition to this we brought out 2 pulaskis and a crosscut saw.
Well, right from there is where things got challenging. On our hike up the first day there were 3 stream crossing within the first 2 miles (all about knee deep). The first 3 miles of the trail climbed up and down small hills and the last 3.5 miles were straight up. Needless to say that first day was pretty challenging and draining. On the up side, our mac and cheese with broccoli never tasted any better. Our second day out on the trail consisted of us trying to contact Moyer to figure out just what we should do while waiting for Nat and Emma to arrive. Thus on our third day we hiked along the Woodtick Ridge to make sure there was no work to be done and we managed to see some amazing views. After that we decided to hike down the trail halfway to the trail head and camp so that we did not have a killer day of hiking when meeting up with Nat and Emma. Our fourth through sixth day on that trail we did a fair amount of work which mostly consisted of logging out the Flume Creek Trail and a little bit of brushing and tread work here and there. Our seventh day was another interesting one. We set out to finish clearing the Flume Creek Trail from the southern side but as we hiked our way in the disappeared and we ended up bushwacking through dense willows.
All in all it was an interesting trip. There were some frustrating points early on but once Nat showed up with some more information about exactly what we were supposed to be doing everything went smoothly. In total we hiked approximately 51 miles of trail and cleared out 19 trees.