Day 8 – Day 12:
For the past few days we have been doing pretty much the same thing. We have been lopping the main trail leading from the camp ground to the parking lot for the Lighting Lake trail head. We finished chopping wood and finished refurbishing the campsites. We also did some tread work along the trail. We built a stairway through a small creek and leveled out parts as well.
One of the nights, Mark was in an argument and it was suggested that he not put out the fire that was to be used for cooking. He did put out the fire and thus we had to start it all over again. Dinner, however, still turned out very good.
We had pasta with an amazing sauce prepared by Alex and Sage. Later that night, Zach, Collin, and Zed decided to “tent” which is when you remove all the tent supports so that the tent collapses. It collapsed on Alex, Mark and Kalina who were playing cards at the time. Also that night, Zach tried to fix his broken fork for twenty minutes because every time he thought he had finally fixed it, he asked Collin to do a strength test and it failed every time. He eventually realized that strength testing was a bad idea and stopped.
The next day, we came up with an iPhone app called “The Best Things Come in Twos.” This app was inspired by Kalina’s habit of having to eat things in twos. The game of Mafia was also introduced to the crew and was very amusing. The crew especially enjoyed the misleading stories narrated by Alex.
Tomorrow, the 23 of July, will be the last day of trail work on the Lightning Lake trails. We will then spend a day working on the three falls trail before heading back to the US.
Adios!
Day 13
Today we woke up to a beautiful blue sky; the warmest weather of our trip. Sadly, this is our last day in the backcountry and we spent most of the morning breaking camp. After going over the campground one last time, we set out to finish some trail work we had started earlier this week. After caching our tools further down the trail we split up into two smaller groups. One group continued cutting back brush along the trail while the other went to finish up a different section of trail. We enjoyed nice weather for the rest of the day before making the final push to the trailhead. For many of us this was the longest backcountry trip we’ve taken and our return to civilization brought mixed feelings for all of us. We’re all going to miss the campsite but we also knew we’d be back camping in the woods in no time.
Day 14
Today will be our second to last day in Canada before we head to North Cascades to work for two weeks. Then the last week will be our rec trip.
We packed our day packs to take with us to work on the three falls trail. We worked on leveling a trail through a rock slide and did some more brushing. The view from the trail was amazing and we had a lot of fun. Along the trail, we found a small patch of snow and had a quick snowball fight. It was a pretty fun last work day in Canada.
When we returned to the barracks, we packed up all the stuff we didn’t need for tonight and tomorrow and started an interesting game of backpack Tetris in the van.
Tomorrow is going to be a long day so I’d better get some sleep!
