Hitch lead: Joe
Member: Stephanie H
One thing's for sure when working with the Roads crew: you're always in for a surprise. This was my second consecutive hitch working with Engineering & Roads, and marked the 3rd for Steph H. We headed to town at 5:30am on Monday expecting to unenthusiastically trim brush and limbs along forest roads for 2 weeks, but ended up on a pretty interesting journey each day during this hitch. We began our work in Stanley, assisting Gary with replacing an extremely rusted culvert (basically a large pipe that channels water under a road). Despite the long drive, it was a really interesting experience learning about the process, and watching Gary maneuver a backhoe like a professional. The following day was spent inventorying signs along the Salmon River and numerous other forest roads for Pete. The signs must be replaced by 2015, so we needed to form a list of existing signs on these roads. The subsequent weeks were spent removing a deteriorating bridge, replacing cattle guards, replacing damaged road hazard signs, removing brush along a number of forest routes, and shuttling road equipment to various staging areas with the crew. The weeks went by fairly quickly, and allowed us to get to know the Roads crew a lot better than before. It's been a great experience working with these guys, and we both gained a new appreciation for the considerable amount of road maintenance completed each year to keep the forest accessible.
Work totals:
2 miles of brushing
1 Culvert replaced
1 Cattle guard replaced
4 Cattle guards recycled
31 Signs inventoried
16 Signs replaced
1 Bridge removed
