After spending all 12 days at the house during Hitch 5, Kiavah crew was back working on a plethora of projects in the Kiavah and Jawbone area. We camped alongside the Jawbone crew as we experienced many different climates that included rain, clouds, extreme wind speed, cold days and nights, and hot and sunny days. Kiavah crew endured through the obstacles to camp out in the wilderness but also complete a lot of great work.
The big project of Hitch 6 was building an erosion control system on a very large hill climb. Using wooden bollards placed at the right proximity to one another, the bollards will disallow rainfall to trickle down the hill in the same path and erosion will be prevented. This was easily one of our hardest projects all season because we had to carry all our tools and material, including 40 Lbs. bollards, up a steep slope. Even with the high degree of difficulty, we did an excellent job while enjoying our time on the project. Even Marty, our BLM contact, came out to help us with our project!
It wasn’t all an uphill battle; we took a day off from our big project and teamed up with Jawbone to restore more than 900 meters of illegal routes! While restoring the incursions, we used methods like planting vertical mulch, laying Joshua trees on the path, and we broke out the rock bar and teamed up to move boulders on the incursion. While moving rocks, our fearless leader Will Hagen, displayed his super natural strength and moved a massive boulder all by himself! Other projects we completed were putting in hard barriers and restoring the area to block off an incursion and we also used hard barriers to create a turn-around while defining and blocking off an illegal route.
Hitch 6 was full of different climates, beautiful sun rises/sets, amazing work, and great people. After a great 12 day hitch, we are all glad to be back at our “Half-way Home” and to be on break. And we ended just in time for the super bowl!!!
