Sorry I've been messing up regularly updating this, but I'm gonna try harder, plus our projects have gotten far more exciting. These last 2 eight day tours have been nice! We've been working in Overton, NV near Lake Mead. I haven't taken many pictures because it's hard when you're using chainsaws which we did this last week. With that in mind I'm gonna put all of the pictures that I took, but none from this last week.
This is actually on the drive home across the country with my roommate Stephanie. I think we were in Oklahoma at this point, and let me tell you, that was a brilliant drive.
This is one of the Southern crew supervisors, Kate, and if you'll look closely at her right hand, she has a deer hoof as an arm... haha
This is Overton, NV. The first part of Week 13 we actually were in Lovell Canyon once again, but because of the weather conditions (snow, sleet and ice for 15 hours overnight) and the severity of the conditions on the safety of the work we quickly moved to Overton to help with the removal of Athel and Tamarisk which are both highly water removing invasive species found throughout southern Nevada.
This is a crew member showing us through picture how happy we were about leaving Lovell Canyon. Those are crew members skipping through the sunshine of Overton with the tools of our trade being help in triumph!
The way you kill Athel is by "girdling" the tree, which means to hatchet around the entirety of the tree at the lowest point/branches.
Towards the end of the week, we took a few hours to learn something and went to Valley of Fire. If you ever find your way to southern Nevada around Lake Mead, it is a beautiful! area and you should highly consider adding it to your journey. This is our crew showing just how happy we were to be there.
Valley of Fire with my friend and crew member, Stephanie.
Sitting around the fire at camp after work.
This is tamarisk that our international from England is hacking through. He is carrying Garlan 4 which is the herbicide that we use to kill the Athel/Tamarisk.
This is my crew supervisor, he climbed several trees that day to find more athel. We were so good at our job that week and the next that we actually found every athel the Management knew about. Spectacular!
Another group picture in Overton still searching for Athel.
Ahh, the internationals... Both of these handsome men are from England and the one "attempting" to shave with a hatchet learned very quickly how important a sharp tool is. So in order to show his awesome sharpening skills we took a sweet photo of him shaving with it.
What a beautiful two weeks, remotely warm weather, wonderful job, and a great group of internationals... I don't think it could have gotten any better.
