So its Friday and this brings an end to the first week up at Plumas National Forest.
The Area is beautiful!!! absolutely gorgeous! So on Monday we packed the van up full and headed the short two hour drive from Sacramento up into the Sierra Nevada mountains where we were going to be working. About 45 minutes into the drive we get a call from the Forestry guys and they tell us is was snowing up in the mountains. This was a shock because it was suppose to be 60 and sunny but instead, as we get up higher and higher we end up having to take the chains out and chain the tires so we could get up some of the hills.
As soon as we got past the foothills we lost service on our phones completely. And that was the end of outside communication. When we reached the forestry barracks which is about 20 minutes from the engine house we were staying in, it was snowing so bad that the electricity had gone out up where our housing was so we ended up staying at the barracks for a night before we could move into our housing. the housing is very nice, its a small little house attached to the Strawberry Valley Engine House and it has a big kitchen which is perfect for all our food (because we eat A LOT!). I am sharing a tiny little room with my team mates Maggie and Warith. There are two beds in the room and a mattress on the floor for Warith but it doesn't really fit so Warith has to sleep with his feet under my bed hahaha. But its cosy and not bad at all.
The Mountains are really amazing. The whole town we live in has only about 20 structures. Two stores, and about 80 people in the whole town. The forest encompasses everything. Huge Ponderous pines with their trunk diameters up to 5 feet wide. Sugar Pines with pine cones as big as my forearm and my favorite trees, Medronas. There are 5 beautiful lakes near by and a stunning reservoir in walking distance, the water of the reservoir is a bright turquoise green because the soil is dark red from the cedar trees.
The guys we are working with are GREAT!. They are all really chilled out and relaxed and funny as hell. They really know their stuff about the forestry and firefighting and chainsaws and in the few days we have been here they we have learned so much already. We haven't done much work yet. They spent the first few days getting us certified to cut bigger trees down and teaching us more techniques.
The chain saw we are using is SO heavy! before this we have been using chainsaws with 24 in bars and pretty small engines. Two days ago I ran the new saw for about 2 and a half hours and my forearms were DEAD. Its the 460 which is one of the most powerful chainsaws so it cuts like butter but its bar is about three feet long and it weighs close 25 pounds which gets tiring to hold up all day. But I am excited to become proficient with it.
The nice thing about our schedule is that it is 4 days on and 3 days off. So I always have 3 days weekends! and we just work 7-5:30 during the week instead. Its great! and it will especially be great once the weather gets nice because then we can spend the weekends like fishing and playing games and hiking all over the national forest, I can't wait!
Ok well I can sometimes get service if I hike around a little bit, but I really am only gunna be able to get service/ web when we make the treck down to the foothills on some weekends so communication might be sketching. Good Luck all and
GO BRUINS!!!!
Friday, April 16, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Tree Planting, Transitions and New project
Hey All OK
well I am back in Sacramento again for a week. But first I have a little re-cap on the past few weeks like I promised.
Ok So a few weeks ago we spent two weeks working at a non-profit camp called Camp Niwana. This camp was a sort of bastard child of camps mostly because it was underfunded and lacked a board of directories. Well due to the lack of funding the camp was forced to clear cut 35acres of forest. When we arrived it looked like a nuclear war had taken place there. There was just fields and fields of sticks and slash and torn up brush, really horrible. Our first week there a bit of a horror show. First off, the camp had planned to have us stay in the house that the camp grounds keeper stays in during the summer. This Camp was about 2 hours away from our other camp on Vashon Island and we had to take a ferry to get to it. But anyways, we we got there the staff, who had not been to the camp in 4 or 5 months because it was off season, realized that all the water pumps were broken so if we were to stay there we would not have water. So we ended up having to commute about 4 hours a day there and back. That was bad but the work for the first week was even worse. We spent 9 hours a day picking up sticks. And really it was nine hours straight (well lunch break) of picking up the branches and slash and putting it into neater piles. It was boring, monotonous work and it really wore on you. But It was only a week. the next week was great. We got to stay there so there was no more commuting and we started planting trees to reforest the area!
It was great!! Ever morning we would get up, do PT and then get to work. We would get these two big satchels that you strapped to your hips and filled with 2 year old saplings. We probably put about 40 or so baby trees in each satchel. Then we would take our dibble bars, which is sort of like a shovel except the entire thing made out of a heavy metal, and the end is thicker and narrower. We would slam the dibbles into the ground, wiggle it around so it made a big enough hole and then carefully slide the sapling into the hole making sure not to crush the roots and then stomp the soil around the tree.
After we got used to it, it would take about 40 seconds to a minute per tree. Between the ten of us we plants 5,000 trees, some Douglas Firs and Some Red Cedars. And we covered all 35 acres with new growth!
So Now as I said before we have left Vashon, which is sad because I loved it there but exciting too because it is GREAT to see all my friends back at base. This base weekend was a long weekend for us and my parents and my brother and my baby sister all flew out to meet me in San Fran!! It was so much fun, we saw all over the city, drove up to wine country and visited my campus!! Now I am back in Sac, besides all of the paperwork and meetings I have to go to, it is really really really really really nice to be back with my friends. But unfortunately we will be splitting up again on Monday. Because on Monday I am going to my next project!!!!!!!
My next project is going to be great. We are working with a Fire and Forestry crew that run Plumas National Forest in northern Cali! We are very excited because being with these guys puts us at the best chance for actually going to a fire. Also there is a different element to this project... usually all projects are from 2-8 weeks. I am going to be stationed in Plumas for four months!!! which is kind of sucky because I would like to move around more but is also good because this also gives us a better chance to see fire then if we were on any other shorter spike.
we will be living in a bunk house at an Fire Engine station near the forest in a town called Strawberry Valley. That's all we know now but I'll keep y'all tuned in
BYE
well I am back in Sacramento again for a week. But first I have a little re-cap on the past few weeks like I promised.
Ok So a few weeks ago we spent two weeks working at a non-profit camp called Camp Niwana. This camp was a sort of bastard child of camps mostly because it was underfunded and lacked a board of directories. Well due to the lack of funding the camp was forced to clear cut 35acres of forest. When we arrived it looked like a nuclear war had taken place there. There was just fields and fields of sticks and slash and torn up brush, really horrible. Our first week there a bit of a horror show. First off, the camp had planned to have us stay in the house that the camp grounds keeper stays in during the summer. This Camp was about 2 hours away from our other camp on Vashon Island and we had to take a ferry to get to it. But anyways, we we got there the staff, who had not been to the camp in 4 or 5 months because it was off season, realized that all the water pumps were broken so if we were to stay there we would not have water. So we ended up having to commute about 4 hours a day there and back. That was bad but the work for the first week was even worse. We spent 9 hours a day picking up sticks. And really it was nine hours straight (well lunch break) of picking up the branches and slash and putting it into neater piles. It was boring, monotonous work and it really wore on you. But It was only a week. the next week was great. We got to stay there so there was no more commuting and we started planting trees to reforest the area!
It was great!! Ever morning we would get up, do PT and then get to work. We would get these two big satchels that you strapped to your hips and filled with 2 year old saplings. We probably put about 40 or so baby trees in each satchel. Then we would take our dibble bars, which is sort of like a shovel except the entire thing made out of a heavy metal, and the end is thicker and narrower. We would slam the dibbles into the ground, wiggle it around so it made a big enough hole and then carefully slide the sapling into the hole making sure not to crush the roots and then stomp the soil around the tree.
After we got used to it, it would take about 40 seconds to a minute per tree. Between the ten of us we plants 5,000 trees, some Douglas Firs and Some Red Cedars. And we covered all 35 acres with new growth!
So Now as I said before we have left Vashon, which is sad because I loved it there but exciting too because it is GREAT to see all my friends back at base. This base weekend was a long weekend for us and my parents and my brother and my baby sister all flew out to meet me in San Fran!! It was so much fun, we saw all over the city, drove up to wine country and visited my campus!! Now I am back in Sac, besides all of the paperwork and meetings I have to go to, it is really really really really really nice to be back with my friends. But unfortunately we will be splitting up again on Monday. Because on Monday I am going to my next project!!!!!!!
My next project is going to be great. We are working with a Fire and Forestry crew that run Plumas National Forest in northern Cali! We are very excited because being with these guys puts us at the best chance for actually going to a fire. Also there is a different element to this project... usually all projects are from 2-8 weeks. I am going to be stationed in Plumas for four months!!! which is kind of sucky because I would like to move around more but is also good because this also gives us a better chance to see fire then if we were on any other shorter spike.
we will be living in a bunk house at an Fire Engine station near the forest in a town called Strawberry Valley. That's all we know now but I'll keep y'all tuned in
BYE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)