We decided to start the New Year off with a little change of scenery this hitch. We had the fortunate opportunity of working with our great friends from the Golden Valley crew at the Grass Valley wilderness area. They welcomed us with open arms and enough work to keep all 14 of us busy the entire hitch. We ended up working on a staggering 975m incursion for most of the hitch that was right on the north east boundary of Grass Valley, which lead to a large denuded area which we filled with some beautiful creosote. But I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, so I’ll start from the beginning.
We first started by splitting into two pods, where one finished up an incursion from one the previous hitches, and the other got to work on our big boy I mentioned before. One especially handsome fellow sadly had some stomach issues and needed to leave the field, but came back the next day ready for work. Due to the size of this incursion, we had 3 trucks out at a time every day collecting mulch from all over Grass Valley. After 6 days of decompacting, mulching, and planting bushes (504 to be exact), we finally finished up our long stretch and now had to focus our work on the denuded area. We started off with some more decompaction and hole digging when we realized we did not have near enough creosote around us to satisfy our holes (Sorry couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to phrase it). So for the first time ever, the Owen’s Peak crew (along with Golden Valley of course) had to take out the trucks to collect some creosote. It was nice at first, but to be completely honest, I wouldn’t mind if I never had to collect creosote again (Just kidding, it wasn’t that bad). We ended up finishing the area on our last day of work and we all agreed that it couldn’t look any better. We then headed back to camp so I could present my Environmental Education (or should I say discussion) on human impact on the environment. After that, we segregated as crews so we could have our post hitch meetings and then relax until we packed up for an early leave in the morning.
Work wasn’t the only thing we did this hitch though, there were plenty of dance parties and games of catch phrase going around as well. We also were lucky enough to be around for Audrey’s EE on constellation mythology which was very informative. There were also some games of Bocce Ball happening which, if you didn’t know, requires you to throw a small ball then throw some big balls at it after. Sometimes the simplest games are the best though. The meals were great, the days were windless, and the sunrises and sunsets could just bring tears to your eyes. So essentially what I’m trying to get at is that this was a hitch that we shall never forget, and we hope that we will be able to work with Golden Valley again some time in the near future. Asta la vista baby.
Sincerely,
Brendan Knipfing and the Flowin’ Owens
