The D. Swingers’ seventh hitch started out at the Old Post in Missoula, eating bomb burgers. The most popular was the bacon and bleu cheese burger, which I think we would all recommend. Then we were on the road to Thompson Falls with a mission: to figure out whether or not Jim is lactose intolerant. To complete this goal, he insisted on drinking nearly a gallon of milk on his own, in the car ride to the trailhead. Luckily, he is not lactose intolerant, but realized that drinking an entire gallon of milk will make you sick either way (duh). Travis also learned something on the car ride: how to text properly. After receiving a text over the break that said, “4 u on scale 1 to 7 7 bing the hghst how much do u lik celary,” something had to be done. After a long discussion about how much each member of our crew does or does not lick celery, I think it is safe to say that Travis will be sending text messages that at least include the vowels.
Monday, August 30th, 2010
After warming up with some tai chi during stretch circle, our crew hiked into Cabin Lake. After doing some retread, our sponsor and his ponies brought in our food and two wall tents. We spent the next several hours setting up the wall tents, with a stove in each one to keep us warm at night. It all had a very old timey feel, chopping wood for our stove in the tent where Jim reads us The Hobbit every night.
Our crew sets up one of our two wall tents.
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Our crew started out the day thinking we would be working on a reroute around an incredibly steep section of trail. Right as we got to the worksite our sponsor called asking us to hike over to the old reroute to blast rocks in our other trail. YAY! Rocky, Ernie and their friends from the Ranger District showed us how the blast rocks using fireline explosives. The explosions were huge, and after pushing the button to set one off, Tom “Man God” Brangers explained to us all how he has thunder in his finger tips…his ego was otherwise unaffected.
DYNAMITE!! Before….
After!
After blasting and redigging the trail, filling in the giant holes that were left, the D. Swingers hiked the long trail back to cabin lake in the rain. Returning to camp with 9 miles under our belt and soaking wet and cold, the only thought on everyone’s mind was to make a fire in the stove, warm up, and relax while listening to Jim read The Hobbit. After getting the fire going, it was noticed that the tent was leaning a bit. The rest of the events happened rather quickly:
1. Jim asks Kevin and Tom to come out of the tent to see how much its leaning, Tom turns him down saying he’ll hold on to the chimney, but really thinking he’d rather take his boots off and not go back outside.
2. Travis and Ashley come out of the kitchen tent to help, but instead hear Jim yell “Get outta there!” and they see the tent go down. With Tom in it.
3. Despite the shock, the entire crew jumps to it to get Tom out from under the tent, which everyone thought was going up in flames within a few minutes. Tom claims he wasn’t screaming like a little girl, but in the chaos I suppose we’ll never know the real truth.
4. Tom gets out, as well as the stove, and we were left with a wall tent on the ground just as we were all going to go to bed.
5. Two hours later, the tent is back up, everyone is still wet, cold, and exhausted, but we can finally go back to bed, although we spent the rest of the week being a little paranoid every time there was a strong breeze.
Wednesday, August 31st, 2010
Rain Rain Rain Rain Rain, Cold Cold Cold, Hail Hail, Thunder Lightning
Thursday, September 1st, 2010
Sunshine!
Ashley, Tom and Kevin enjoy the view and the sunshine after the terrible weather the day before.
The weather turned (thank goodness), but I don’t think it was as successful as raising the crews spirits as our sponsor was when he brought us bacon and sausage. Yummmm….meat! Well…raising everyone’s spirits except for Travis, our crew’s vegan. After announcing that the smell of bacon makes him vomit, our sponsor, Steve, dared him to go in the tent and smell it while it was cooking. Travis did it, and despite a lot of hacking, coughing, and ghagging, he successfully did not puke.
The crew’s excitement for some real meat.
Travis smelling the bacon.
The rest of the hitch went as normal as it can, with the few highlights being discovering a cool echo Friday night. We all enjoyed yelling characters from Lord of the Rings to have the mountains echo them back to us. Of course everyone went a little loopy on the last day, with Kevin headbutting and tickling Tom etc. We had an extra member join our crew for our last day, Jim’s friend Drew. He was great and was up for digging trail in the snow with us after driving all night and hiking in.
Tom “Man God” Brangers catching snowflakes on his tongue.
Workin’ in the snow, and a little loopy on the last day.
SNOW!!!
Well…another hitch down, only two more to go, and our crew is as good and as strange as we’ll ever be, minus one major person of course. We missed you everyday Vicky! And will continue to miss you the rest of the season!
No comments:
Post a Comment