six months of MCC in one blog post.

Bozeman Purple Crew!
by Michael Atkinson.

29May
Started MCC on Tuesday, but all we've done so far is gone to a place called Camp Paxson, and had some orientation and first aid training...my crew is pretty cool, and everyone on all the other crews too. on Monday we do some more training, and then we finally start actual work...our first project is eradicating houndstongue, which is lame, but most of the next six months will be in the backcountry of Yellowstone, building trail, and I am very excited!

12June

this past week we were pulling an invasive species called Houndstongue, that grows fast and wild and crazy and kills everything! It's a very boring job, but fortunately it's the worst job we'll have this whole five months, so it was good to get it done at the beginning.
we were pretty much crawling through swampy jungle in a rainstorm looking for Houndstongue, for about ten hours minus breaks. I may be masochistic to think so, but being so miserable and getting paid so little for doing a terrible thankless job that really really needs to get done is rather empowering, if you know what I mean.

21June
Last week my crew was supposed to be putting up barbed wire fencing...but we got rained out. We drove for like eight hours on Monday to get to our work site, but then the last ten miles or so was on an old dirt road and there was a huge rainstorm, and our truck got stuck in the mud way way bad...we were literally driving sideways for like a quarter mile, that took about 15 minutes, before we stopped and decided to turn around. So we drove out and spent the night at the Bureau of Land Management HQ...it was pretty fun, I slept in a trailer and caitlyn slept in a boat. We climbed a mountain to watch a beautiful sunset. The sunrise the next morning was equally beautiful...the BLMers start working at like 5:00, so I was up before then.
We're probably going to go back later to do the fencing project.

27July
Finished the Fan Creek Reroute this week! Joe's crew came, it was like a big party. Working with the other crew was really fun. Each day, the walk to work was noticeably longer...so many people working on one trail, we busted out super fast, about 250 paces every day.
There were a few thunderstorms this week, had to stop working for a while one day to let it pass. We finished the trail a day early, and went hiking the last day to Sportsman Lake. It was a beautiful hike, and a wonderful lake, and a great day, even though it started hailing really hard right when we got there....
The day we left, we made pancakes in the morning...and I decided to put hot chili powder in one. It was completely red, totally different from the other pancakes, but Joe didn't notice, and got almost all the way through it before we told him that it had chili in it....
Then we worked for a couple hours, and right as we were getting ready to leave, it started raining, HARD. we had to go down to the bottom of the valley and just stand in soaking grass, getting completely wet, for about half an hour, waiting for it to pass. Once it finally stopped raining, we had to hike out totally soaked...most uncomfortable hike of my life. It was just motivation to get out of there faster.
Some of us are road trippin' to Washington this weekend!


23September
My crew has just finished our last of three spikes in Lamar Valley, Yellowstone, doing a reroute for Miller Creek Trail. We were camped ten miles into the backcountry.
Not much to say about it, other than, Miller Creek is not terribly exciting. We saw a total of three moose during the trip, which was rather exciting...compared to the last three weeks in Miller Creek, when the most interesting thing we saw was like a squirrel maybe. Also Kayla and I almost got trampled by a bison on the hike out.

4October
My crew got back on Friday from the Rattlesnake Wilderness Area. We were told a number of things before this hitch, that subsequently proved to be false, including:
this is a frontcountry project
there's no bears
It's in a Wilderness Area, meaning no vehicles...but we got a special permit to take our rig in to the wilderness area. So we drove like 7 miles down what I guess is technically a road, but felt a lot more like driving down a dry river bed...couldn't go more than about 10 miles per hour without ruining the rig. And then we hiked about a mile to our campsite, which isn't bad. But it felt a lot more backcountry than any other projects we've had so far, including 10 miles in the backcountry of Yellowstone.

Also, there are bears. The other crew we were working with saw one on their way to work, and there was scat right outside of our campsite, and Erin heard one right in camp at night.
But it was a really really fun hitch...my favorite so far, I think? So. We drove to Missoula, met the Missoula MCC crews, and drove out to the Rattlesnake Wilderness.
Our work involved maintaining/repairing some dams that were built in the 20s and 30s by the CCC...it was really really cool, and amazingly beautiful. On Wednesday it started snowing, and didn't stop till the day we left. For some reason I didn't mind...there was too much beauty for me to get discouraged by the cold windy discomfort.
It was a short hitch, but we go back tomorrow to finish it up...wish we could be there longer.

22October
Currently we're weatherizing houses for fifteen days. We've been at it for ten days so far, and we're going back to Bozeman this Monday. Weatherizing isn't really my thing, I like trailwork and living in the woods...but it's interesting work, and I'm glad to get the experience. Most of the people we've weatherized haven't seemed very impoverished, like I thought they would be. A few have been though. I've never really been to an Indian Reservation before.
After we're done on Sunday, we're driving back on Monday. Then we will have five days off, a few days of work I think, and we're done with MCC (well, except for our crewleaders). It has been a crazy six months, and I will miss my crew and Bozeman...but I'm ready to be done.

- Michael Atkinson