On a Scale from 1 to 7

Sunday, August 29th, 2010
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!

Adios, Vicky

Last week consisted of a lot of tedious and time consuming lopping of our trail, the fun part of that was that I found out just how large of a tree I could cut down with a pair of loppers. There was a very fun part of the week though, our sponsor brought up a Pionjar, for those not in the know that’s a gas powered rock drill/jack hammer, to drill holes in some large rocks that our crew could not move. The plan is to blow them up next week, which should offer us a few hours of excitement. The rest of the week was spent doing retread, we have finished close to 1,500 feet so far and only have about another mile left to go. The sad news of the week was that it was Vicky’s last week, she’s moving on to greener pastures, she has landed herself a job in Spain teaching English. Well Vicky, Adios and good luck!

Tom Brangers

hitch summary

The D-Swing went nomadic this past week. During their eight day hitch they camped in three different places. First along the Clark Fork River not too far from Thompson Falls. Then at River Fairy Falls near their trail head. Finally, with the help of two horse friends, Smoky and Bridger and one mule friend, Farmer, they moved up the way of Cube Iron to a nice wild spot near their work, say thankya. Their work being two re-routes of a mostly recreational hiking trail leading to the Four Lakes Region and Cube Iron Mountain. The slope of the terrain was a less severe, but still formidable version of a nearby avalanche slide of fallen trees and rock. Layers of Cube Iron's age stood between the D-Swing and thier trail, but not for long.
Good work and satisfaction was in the brushing stage thanks to Kevin's fixing of the brand new saw's trigger spring. After, it screamed two full days true, that chainsaw, and when it was done, a path of destruction and chaos stretched 850 feet laying out the second re-route. It was four dead logs deep in places and always wrapped around a stump, which was anchored around a rock which has been sleeping in the bear grass since the Flintstones. Making an estimate on how long it was gonna take to finish was the game they played on Wednesday night. Saying two more days for 700 something feet was Tom Branger. That gotta laugh from some, and a look from others. Either we're loosing touch, Crew Leader Ashley thought, or becoming a true trail crew. She also thought M&M's...like... a lot. Not even just craving 'em too. She thought about them like they were the popular kids at school, asking her to sit with them and be cool. Asking her what she thought about stuff. Asking her to "be an M," whatever that means. She talks when she swings folks, she says it eases her mind, and I listen, cause that woman’s got troubles that‘ll make the Mad Hatter shut up and stare. Not to mention mess with your idea of what dessert is, or isn’t. Yeah, we’re half way through the season folks, and the lines are blurred. The luggage has been lost and so has any inhibition.
Anyway, a true trail crew they were becoming. In the next two days they pooched out the trail rough, and by the end of the third it was done nice. What a sight it was seeing that trail pooch clean? What was once a river of mayhem was now a stock worthy walk. The D-Swing got their licks and their kicks and all that was left to do was a bit of brushing further down the trail and a hike to the next site to wet our tongues. It’s a beautiful site of lakes and meadows. It’s a nice spot for some digging.
Long Days and Dirty Nights,
D-Swing

Stepping in it - Tom Brangers, CD

Our spike was a very interesting and trying one. It started off with an amazing experience, we watched three dogs chase a moose across a river, then we saw a black bear about a quarter mile from our camp site, its a good thing Travis and Ashley taught us safe back country camping techniques! This was not our only run in with wild life, Katie stared down a large black bear by herself, she has nerves of steel!

The trying part of this spike came around Tuesday, we thought we had finished our first project but were informed by our sponsor that we still had a day and a half left. Needless to say this temporarily broke our spirits. Luckily we we worked through our frustrations and got to move on to our new site on Thursday. The new site was worth the wait, its a beautiful place, the best part of it is that we actually get to see hikers that are using the trail we our working on.

The week almost ended without incident, except for one situation- I stepped in Vicky's poop! To her defense, she did try to cover it up with a rock, but I thought said rock would be a good weight to hold down our tool cache. None of the crew has let her live that one down yet. Other than that situation it was a great week!

The Plains Crew Chronicles

Whoooaaa- building trail is like totally awesome.

What a day this week has been. The Plains Crew set out once again on a path that knows no end. After celebrating the fourth with explosions, s'mores and wonderment we saddled up again for what we had hoped would be our last installment of our switchback-crazy, trail-building extravaganza. Sore muscles made us cry, blistery feet made us whimper, and good food made our tummies grumble. It's all part of the job, and we're rising to the challenge quite nicely if you ask me.

Good news. We're cozying up even more with our sponsor, Steve. What a totally awesome, super fantastic, stellar dude. He even comes out and melts with us in the hot hot sun.

Other highlights include the CCIRCUSSSSSSSSS! Holy cow it was amazingggggggggg.

We also had to pull weeds on two of our 5 days off. Really MCC? One of our less fortunate members had to do it for 4 of hir 5 days off. They didn't even bring us any gatorade or those nice ice cream sammiches that they know for a fact that we like! Whatevs, MCC, you know you got us coming back for more.

Vicky Anderson

D-Swing

The Plains Crew, aka "Dirty Swingers" started off their hitch setting up camp in the rain and hale. It was very wet, and pretty darn cold. Luckily, the crying in their hearts never made it out. Instead, the theme song to Three's Company and other wholesome jingles carried them through taking turns setting up their tents under a tarp while Tom whipped together some Kentucky Yum Yum Din Din.

Sweet sunshine welcomed then in the morning and by the time they hiked up to their site moving dirt and doing work was all they could think about, so that's what they did. Did well too, banged out rugged trail and skinned logs for a switch back all day long no problem.

By mid hitch the Dirty Swingers had finished the upper blaze of Hill 7 , got a decent start on the retaining wall for the switch back, and set their teeth into the lower segment. Ashley brought a digital camera up and started getting footage of their progress, as well as some ...other stuff. Dirty Swingin I guess you might call it.

Other memories include getting published in magazine, a moose waiting in line for the bathroom and locals blasting GodSmack at 2:30 in the morning ten feet from Katies tent. At first she was really pumped, but then decided she'd rather sleep. Kinda lame in most peoples eyes I'm sure, but hey, to each their own.

In the end they did what they set out to do and did it true, say tbankya. Only the matter of what this cowboy is calling Scarlet Fever really hangs unresolved. Love on the trail is a fickle thing, ain't it?

-Long days and pleasant nights from the D-Swing

First Hitch

Our first 8 day hitch. We set up camp at Dry Creek campground about 45 minutes outside of the town of Thompson Falls.

Most of the time was spent rerouting a trail built by the CCC in the 30's. The trail follows a draw and parts are very steep, our job involved building new trail and adding switchbacks to avoid the steep sections. We ended up brushing, clearing and digging 1700 feet of new trail this hitch.

The ultimate goal is to have the trail be able to be used by both hikers and stock, mostly for elk hunting. We will be working on this trail for the next two hitches, finishing up the switchback section we started then moving on to two shorter sections. Part of the work will be building large cribbing retaining walls to anchor the switchbacks to the side slope and provide a good platform for stock to turn around.


The crew: Jim, Tom, Travis, Me, Vicky, Katie, Ashley.


Travis felling a tree to make way for the trail.


The crew rolling a huge rocky mountain maple root ball off the trail, It took half a day to cut out, there was much rejoicing.


Brand new trail.


Cutting out a stump. It's a lot of work and takes a while. Each one gets it's very own name.

-Kevin Carns, CD CM