Lovell Canyon - Weeks 10 and 11

Honestly, the last two 8 days of work have been essentially the same project. Trail work and continuously the same thing for 16 days of my life. It's not about to change, there are at least 3 more 8 days coming, and possibility of two more after that. Sad. I have pictures, but there really is little explanation. This is probably my least favourite project thus far, and I'm having a hard time finding the good in the project overall. At this point though, I'm doing my best to stay positive for the crew because I know it's important for us to be happy throughout the project to be the most productive.






































































































































































































































































So, to put all of this together, basically, the first week building trail, we were two crews meeting up 2 miles away from one other crew. We somehow magically managed to finish all 2 miles, even though none of us had ever built trail before except for our bosses. It was... interested/frustrating beyond all belief. Thankfully it's an absolutely beautiful area and that really helps with any frustration levels that occur.
On the second week of trail, we were with a Las Vegas crew, one of the other crews from the week before, and then also a new set of people called the NCCC (National Civilian Conservation Corps, I prefer to call them the N-Trips). They are also new at trail, and were not prepared. On Friday is snowed, rained, sleeted, and iced on us in less then 1 hour... and it didn't stop, the entire day. We stopped work at noon because of unstable working ground, and the inability to hold on to tools appropriately. Above are a few pictures of the day after that horrendous working atmosphere. A most intriguing experience, and I'm waiting to see how things come out in the end.

Week 9

October 29th, 2007

Red Rock Canyon/Brownstone Canyon is probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life. Ever. Lake Tahoe was pretty, but I'd almost say that this place was better. The picture to the left is the first campsite we were at. Unfortunately for us, they only put us down for 4 days, but we needed 7, so our last 3 nights were actually spent where we were working.



This is where we were working, Brownstone Canyon. I kind of got sidetracked most of the week as far as pictures go, and most of them are actually of the scenery because I just couldn't get over how poignantly beautiful it all was.









Because of where Las Vegas is (we were about 4 miles outside of Northwest Vegas) and what time of year we were there, the moon was out until almost 10 am everyday, and it went away for a few hours every night as well. Very odd.









Our job this week was actually to build a fence. A very long and metal fence. To show how deep and wide our holes had to be, we took a picture of just how much like a mini-jacuzzi these holes were. The fence was to be 860 feet long with over 300 poles, 1600 pounds of concrete, and over 1700 feet of 3/4" wire cable. Yeah, intense.







One of the first days while digging (which is how we started this little project) one of the girls got jumped at by a TARANTULA! Seriously though, I think we all had little heart attacks for and with her. He was about 4" long and ridiculously furry.









This is just a portion of the fence. The whole point of it was to section of a wilderness area outside of a newcoming subdivision. The project was subsidized by a corporation started by Howard Hughes and they own a lot of land in and around Vegas. The HH corp. was doing this to garner local interest in the wilderness area, stop ATV's from going into the area, and to get a lot of PR.





Just to show my sidetrack-iness, this is one of many pictures of flora and fauna. This is my first cactus I've ever seen in person not in a zoo or somewhere else not meant to be.
























Mixing the concrete are two of our internationals for the week, Kitae and Blair (from Korea and Scotland respectively). And the picture below that is them with an auger. Though it's just the two of them, some holes actually required 3 people, two holding on and one pushing on the top for some extra 'umph'.





















This picture is actually me coming back from taking my first crap in the "woods". We actually have to dig a hole several inches deep and keep the paper on us, etc. It's a rather intense experience. But I have to say that while looking out over Las Vegas you can actually give yourself the feeling that you are taking a crap on the city (which I am not really a fan of if you couldn't tell).



















Our last night staying at the campsite we decided to go somewhere else to cook dinner, so we went on a little drive to Red Rock Canyon park and made spaghetti and took pictures. We have far too much fun for our own good.









The first section of our fence finished! This was such a relief and made us feel much better about whether it was going to get finished entirely or not.










Another group shot before we went on a learning expedition to see some Indian pictographs and petroglyphs.

























These pictographs were literally less then a mile from where we were working. They are apparently some of the most pristine pictographs left in the Southwest.










The Bureau of Land Management Archaeologist took us through all of these pictures and he explained some of what we were seeing, but apparently most of it he is unwilling to "translate" because he feels as though he is incapable of that. But as you can see, this is obviously a devil. Obviously.







In this picture you can see a "man" in the middle of the picture, and he said it was either a woman wearing a loincloth, or a shaman with *ahem* an engorged genital region.










Now... because of the colouring, apparently this is NOT a fake drawing. I am inclined to disagree, what real Indian would draw this???? Not a one.



































































This is after the majority of the fence was done, and we took a climbing a break because we were gonna finish early so they gave us a break for working so hard. And those people down there, well, they are ATV'ers and we totally enjoyed watching them get frustrated about the fence being there. Below is a video of our commentary while watching them come in...







That evening we were very cold, and decided to snuggle for warmth.












And now for how I totally lose, I didn't take any more pictures of the completely finished fence. But, to make up for it, we took jumping pictures and the Can-Can!










Beautiful sunset after a job well done!

Next week, back to Vegas a little further south in Lovell Canyon!

Week 8: Two months!

October 15th, 2007

So my apologies for the lateness, but I had a lot of problems with the pictures from Ash Meadows which is where we were based this last week. This first picture is the beginning of our 6 hours drive, right outside of Reno/Sparks.







I have so many pictures of the drive because it's so different then what we had seen in Lake Tahoe.











The tree you see there is called a Joshua Tree, but it's actually part of the cactus tree, and the "trunk" is all of the sharp "leaves" dead and pushed down into a trunk like apparatus.










This is one of about 40 brothels between Reno and Las Vegas. There are only two counties that can't have legal prostitution and that is Washoe and Clarke county where Reno and Vegas are.










The first night in Ash Meadows, we already had dinner cooked, so all we had to do was set up our tents and play, so we played Travel Scrabble. It was a great time as you can tell!










The first day of work we got split into two separate groups and two of us got sent out alone to deal with cockaburr shrubs. They were in a marshlike place, so we were in water boots that had lots of holes in them. Kind of pointless. But we had a great time and we just sort of enjoyed ourselves working in a new place. All of the white pipes you see are actually a watering system that someone within Ash Meadows put in because there was a fire that ravaged the area a few years ago. Funny story though, the way the fire got started was an NCC volunteer had once worked in Alaska and thought that the correct way to handle toilet paper even here in Nevada was to light it on fire. Unfortunately, that started a 70 acre fire that completely tore Ash Meadows to pieces.
These are less then half of the bags that we had to use to pick up all of the cockaburr plants. Some of these root systems were outrageously large and there was a lot of whole body weight pulling. I got good at it.









This is from our "educational" afternoon with the Ash Meadows people and we had to count all of these different kinds of fish because the entire reason for Ash Meadows is to save an endemic species of fish called "pup fish". I don't agree with killing other animals to save one kind of animal, but there's a lot of other things involved with it too.













These are the crawfish that we are sexing and then killing, rather, we ate them.












As you can see here... Unfortunately (and this may be resolved later) all of my pictures from the rest of the week crapped out on me so there is no more to show or write about as of right now, but the rest of the week was basically kicking tookus and taking out a lot of cattail. Perhaps I will be able to revive the pictures and use them, but for now, that's all there is.

This week's installment is coming sooner then later!