Hitch 6: Golden Valley vs. Owens Peak. Location: Grass Valley. Outcome: Immense Fun, Bomber Work and The. Best. Pep. Talk. Ever: SKCID.
Grass Valley welcomed us into the New Year with sunshine, breath-taking moon rises, and the Owens Peak Crew. Finding themselves homeless for Hitch 6, Owens Peak decided to help us undertake the looming mission of camouflaging the 975m incursion on the north east wilderness boundary. After our holiday break, both crews were pumped to embrace the Mojave once again and this time with two green monsters!
We started the hitch off splitting up into two pods after an exciting game of freeze tag. Pod 1, the best, finished up a restoration project from hitch 4 managing to loose only one member due to the stomach flu. The other pod started digging, decompacting and mulching for the 975m incursion. Matt and Clayton embraced the secret mission to outsmart the Skyline bandit, which Kelsey and Ryan finished passionately. We hope our efforts will scare him away. Brendan came back feeling stronger than ever, so we had all hands on deck for the 975m incursion. In order to satisfy the incursion’s mulch hunger, we took out two to three trucks on daily mulch runs. Finally on day 6, we finished the site after a massive bet was placed on how many bushes we planted. The result was 504 shrubs, leaving Audrey Hommeyer the winner with an almost exact guess of 500. After everyone had mulched, dug and decompacted up to their eye balls, we switched from building small brush to gigantic creosote in order to de-nude the denuded area! Resulting in more mulching, digging and decompacting. However, the Toco (hitch leader) huddled everyone together (football style) and gave the pep talk of a lifetime ending with a loud cheer, everyone’s spirits rose and they were up for the task ahead. The sun managed to shine the whole hitch through, which helped us end the last day a little early after planting a total of 600 bushes including the biggest creosote Matt Duarte has ever seen (props to Dingles).
Even though we faced the most extensive project of the session so far, Golden Valley insured there was enough enjoyment to go around (defeating Owens Peak’s serious attitudes). We started every day off with amazing breakfasts and ended with timely dinners and delicious cookies. Spontaneous dance parties took place multiple times and we incorporated games into our morning warm-ups. Every night the sunset and moonrise were appreciated, leaving us stunned mid-hitch with the most incredible full moon any of us have seen. We successfully defeated the dreaded Day 7 (besides the horrid oatmeal incident) and had an exciting night of star gazing and constellation mythology. We enjoyed sharing a few Golden secrets with Owens Peak and ended the hitch with a drum circle ceremony.
Maybe next time we will have age appropriate trivia.
Many windless thanks Mojave!
Yours Truly,
The Golden Valley Crew
