Hitch 3:Tongue River Canyon

   Wyoming continues to amaze me. I spent the last ten days in the bighorn mountains of northern Wyoming working on a trail in the tongue river canyon that leads to the tongue river cave. Right now the cave is closed to prevent the spread of white nose bat syndrome.  Unfortunately, people choose on a daily basis to disrespect the closure and enter the cave anyway, risking a $5,000 per person fine.  In addition, the cave seems to attract a mischievous crowd as the walls in and outside the cave are covered in graffiti.  The trail itself wasn't in much better shape when we arrived.  The steep slopes are littered with trash and erosion is very bad as people cut off the switchbacks to find a faster way up or down the trail.  It's one of those unfortunate dilemmas of public land management.  The forest service has an obligation to maintain the trail for users to pass safely, but the trail leads to a closed cave that no one should be entering.  Are we just making it easier for the rough crowd to go do bad things?

cave entrance

 

      I spent a majority of our 10 days in the tongue river canyon considering this.  Ultimately, I realized that it isn't an option to let the trails condition continue to degrade.  All you can do is fix it up to working condition and hope that the solutions you've come up with are sustainable.  Hopefully, users will see the trail looking better and start to treat it that way.  Really what I'm saying is that if you treat a place poorly, people will follow the agency's lead.  If you take time and care to make it nice, maybe people will treat it accordingly.  I guess we wouldn't know unless we tried.  

    Aside from the dilemmas of work, we could not have asked for a more beautiful work site.
 The tongue river is running at flood levels and I could say for a fact that going for a swim in the river would surely result in death.  But, the views from the cave entrance were extraordinary.  I was lucky enough to see my first moose since moving here on our last morning of work.  Additionally, I got to see the western side of the Bighorn mountains and make my first drive into Montana in the bighorn national recreation area where another crew was working.  From the top of the bighorns, you can see all the way out to the wind river range and yellowstone national park.

Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area

       For now, I must go pack my bags as my crew leaves in the morning for Boysen State Park/Reservoir in central Wyoming.  Although the temps are certainly rising out here, it will be nice to be at a place where we can swim at the end of our work day.  It will also be my first time seeing that part of the state.  

Walking back from work on the last day-Beautiful!

40 down 10 to go

I've now reached the milestone of having visited 40 of the 50 US states.  I'm quite proud of this, and feeling ambitious as to knock of 3 or 4 more by the end of the summer.  Upon arriving back in Laramie on Wednesday morning, Kory and I threw all of our stuff into his jeep and headed south to Colorado to do some Laundry at his dad's and then hit the road.  We finally left around 6pm and by the time I had played almost all of the songs I wanted to hear on my I-pod, we stopped in Frisco off of I-70 for a really deliscious meatball pizza that we took to go.  We finally got to grand junction around midnight and realized that in order to get to the camping area in Colorado National Monument, we had to drive 19 miles of winding roads with extremely steep drop offs.  In 30 mph winds, we set up our tent and went to sleep.  Driving out of the park in the early morning was beautiful and the dramatic landscape made the 19 miles seem a lot shorter.

We hit the road to Utah and arrived in Moab around noon.  We drove into Arches national park and did the 4 mile roundtrip hike to see delicate arch, famous for its spot on Utah licence plates. We drove around Moab in search of camping and wound up staying at the KOA.  After enjoying a beer and some dinner at Moab Brewery we enjoyed the wi-fi that's available at all KOA's.  We planned to wake up around 5 to watch the sun rise on landscape arch but overslept and decided to sleep in a bit longer.  We finally left at 6 and hiked in to the arch only to find out that due to a rockfall 20 years ago, you can no longer actually walk up to it.  Bummer!

This is Landscape Arch

and this is the view of Delicate arch through another 

arch where the wind was so strong that I almost got 

blown over.  I am wind surfing in this shot in case you

can't tell.

Upon returning to the parking lot at landscape arch, Kory concluded that for the sake of being able to take either of our cars on road trips this summer, I MUST learn to drive manual.  Lucky for me we had Kory's Dad's dodge diesel pickup truck which allowed me to accidentally shift from 2nd gear to 5th gear without stalling the beast.  After a few miles we switched back so Kory could get us to the highway.  I managed about another 100 miles of driving on I-70(through a narrow canyon I might add) before I put putted my way to a stop about 50 feet past an off ramp.  Kory drove the rest of the way back to Fort Collins and then decided I needed to drive from the grocery store back to his dad's house in a different vehicle, his jeep.  Hopefully with some practice, my passengers with no longer need cervical collars to protect their spines while I drive.  Now that I can drive both manual and automatic, I figured that I'm twice as likely to see my last ten states before I ever even leave north america.  Sweet!

Hitch 1:Glendo Reservoir

A couple months of adventure have led to a total lack of blogging.  My most sincere apologies to my sturdy fan base.

Anyway, project 1 at Glendo State Park began Monday May 23rd.  My best description would be that it was a memorable learning experience.  The town of Glendo is in southeast Wyoming and home to 229 residents.  The towns only attraction is the state park, which dams the North Platte River before it continues south to the Guernsey reservoir, where another crew was doing pine beetle mitigation work.

We left the cabin Monday morning around 10 and arrived to nice weather in Glendo to set up our camp at the two moons campground where we had a huge pavilion all to ourselves.  Each day between 3 and 4, an afternoon thunderstorm either hit Glendo or blew by not far south.  For most of the week, we struggled to get much work done as communicating with our agency was difficult and its impossible to build trails in the rain.  In total we had 3 days where rain prevented us from doing any work outside of the garage.  To compensate, we spent quite a few mornings sharpening tools and washing park vehicles just to pass some time.  By friday, the agency finally had sandbags for us to distribute throughout the park.  This was great, as we were all anxious to work, but we had finished by 10am and once again had nothing to do...so we picked up trash for 2 hours.  I'll just say for the record, that even though I'm all about public land improvement, picking up trash when you're expecting to build trail is a HUGE let down.  We dabbled around with a bit more sandbagging in the afternoon and then called it a day.

Saturday, which would have been a full day off, wound up being a half day off because we weren't putting in enough hours to meet our expected 80 hours of work.  We went down to Guernsey in the afternoon to visit with the other crew and go out to eat for the coveted 'night out' meal.  Eating out wound up being a great crew bonding experience as there was no pressure on anyone to cook or clean, a really great treat after camping for a week.  Another day of crappy weather kept us from the trails on Sunday and somehow we would up painting 'road closed' barriers instead.  Monday we put in 11 hours and on Tuesday we put in 10, giving us some satisfaction and plenty of blistered sore hands.

Overall, the hitch was good.  Even though we didn't get as much physical work done as I expected, we did work in other ways.  Taking 8 people who are mostly strangers and packing them into a GMC yukon and saying 'here's you're equipment, go get stuff done for america' to say the very least, is a challenge, and we made it.  Next stop is pine beetle mitigation in our own backyard, medicine bow national forest.

Earth Week Skills!

                 Dumpster diving, welcome to my skills.  Last Thursday at 2:00pm, the crew leaders kicked off some earth day celebrations by collecting 280 pounds of garbage from the student union dumpster.  After loading the trash into our WCC trucks, we took it to the university's physical plant for some sorting.  The University of Wyoming student union is blessed with an extensive array sorting bins so that it is crystal clear where to put what refuse.  The paper bin even has a narrow slot so that only paper should fit in.  Generally, people don't put trash in the recycling, but they certainly feel free to put their recycling in the trash-THIS IS RIDICULOUS!  So, after weighing all of our sloppy food covered bags, we tore them open and began to remove recyclables.  We pulled our about 40 pounds of 'resonable' recycling. By that I mean that the bottles/plastics/and papers were clean enough to be recycled.  If you think about 40 pounds of plastics and papers, that really is quite a quantity.  Also in consideration were the heaps and heaps of food in the trash that could have been composted if the union had that available.  We were particularly perturbed by the university catering services compostable cups that wound up in the trash instead of the recycling.  Additionally, with only a 5% margin for error at the recycling plant, it is critical that people don't put trash in bottles and remove lids, which actually aren't recyclable.
                The next day, we made our way to the salvage yard in Laramie.  After spending about an hour sifting through scrap metal in the freezing cold, we had gathered enough materials to construct a gigantic sage grouse.  For those of you not from the west, the sage grouse is a very strange looking chicken-type creature that is now protected in 'core areas' in Wyoming so that it is not listed on the federal endangered species list.  Our goal, is to create the frame of a gigantic sage grouse to put in the center of campus on earth day that students can fill with recyclables that our campus actually recycles.  (Hint-you should all google the sage grouse).  My real point here is that we can all do a little bit better at being effective recyclers.  I know many people who think that recycling really doesn't matter, but is there anyone who can't spare quite literally 10 seconds to make sure their product gets put in the correct bin.  Take a little time and make a little change to your routine...Because lots of little changes make one big difference.

Happy Earth Week!

The Forest Service

Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the forest service had an idea that the forest service would be responsible to "provide the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people in the long run".  National forests and grasslands encompass 193 million acres of land in the US, and area equivalent to the size of Texas.  Although it's managed by the Department of Agriculture, the forest service is budgeted through the Department of the Interior.    In addition to managing our nations forests and grasslands, the Forest Service is also the largest forestry research organization in the world.  Another mission of the forest service is to achieve an effective workforce that represents the full range of diversity of the american people.

By sustaining the health, diversity, and productivity of the country's forests and grasslands, the forest service is able to meet the needs of current and future generations.  One of the main missions of the forest service is to listen to the people and respond to their needs through decision making.  Through a multiple use ecological management policy, I'm sure the forest service will continue to effectively manage our grasslands and forests for years to come.

Greetings from...

Colorado fire camp, where I am well on my way to becoming a sawyer.  In fact, I've come far enough that I now pronounce the word as it should be SAWyer and not SOYyer.  Essentially, I'm learning with 13 other WCC crew leaders and supervisors how to safely operate and maintain a chainsaw for tree felling(simply put, cutting down trees).

We arrived wednesday night in a caravan of pickup trucks and suburbans in Salida, Colorado(population 5,000 and elevation 8,000 feet).  Salida is nestled up in the mountains 3 hours southwest from Denver and home to the fire camp where students can eat sleep and saw for two days in the comfort of the Ponderosa Lodge.  All day thursday was spent in the classroom learning the jargon and safety information that allows us to pick up a saw in the first place.  This morning we spent additional time in the classroom, learning all the parts of the saw and how to perform maintenance daily and weekly.  After lunch we ventured outside to the saw shop where we took our saw apart for maintenance and finally, sharpened the chains and fueled up.

My first attempt at firing up was definitely rough.  Donning all of our PPE(personal protective equipment) including saw chaps, hard hats, glasses, and ear plugs, I failed to hear the engine fire on choke, thus I instantly concluded I was a bad sawyer.  But, after a few tries and some assistance I got er' started and gave the throttle a nice squeeze.  Now, a fully fueled and oiled saw is no light object.  It is cumbersome and awkward for a beginner, and only experience makes those imperfections fade away.  Watching our instructor Mark hold the saw in class on day one, I assumed that the saw was light and as long as I studied, this would all be simple.  Wrong.  You could read saw books all day but when the saw is in your hands, your newly acquired knowledge flies out the window.  But, such is the way of learning and being a student.

Tomorrow, we head into the field to fell some real trees.  I'm optimistic about the forecast for scatted thunderstorms and 30mph winds tomorrow.  I mean really, anything worse than that would be like felling trees in a hurricane.  No biggie.  Maybe I'll switch paths and become a lumberjack(or Jill).  Maybe I'll get my red card and fight wildland fires for the big bucks.  Or maybe I'll just be a really good tree feller for the WCC.  Either way, my point is that it's nice to be a student again.   There's so much to learn!

Negotiation

Past negotiation experiences have left me not so satisfied.  As a sometimes 'glass half empty' person, I think that if I have to negotiate then I'm already at a disadvantage.  In order to gain something, then I must lose something else.  With a modestly reasonable other party, you can actually leave a negotiation having gained something of value.  The magic of negotiation, as I learned from Dr. Steve Smutko is that in negotiation, value can be created by assigning points to the desired outcomes of each party.  Dr. Smutko is University of Wyoming's Chair of Collaborative Practice and an economics proffesor.  He has facilitated numerous public policy decisions in the mountain west as well as the southeastern U.S., and teaches negotiation analysis to UW students.  Like a good economist, Dr. Smutko conveyed his points about negotiation to our class by assigning half the class one role, and the other half another role.  For example, I was assigned to be the agent of Sally Soprano, a fictional opera singer looking to get back into the industry.  The other party was the Lyric opera house, looking for a performer for their upcoming show.  With the addition of many other factors, we had to work with the opera house to agree on a salary for Sally Soprano.  Ultimately, our negotiations were what I would call collaborative.  We understood that both parties had desired outcomes and we worked together to achieve them.

I'm hoping that this summer the negotiations will be much more simple.  I've made up an image in my mind of two crew members who both want the last pancake at breakfast.  Sam and I, trusty crew leaders, will sweep in with our super-people capes and and alternating lines say "hey guys, how bout one of you breaks it in half and then the other gets to pick which half they get!".  Obviously, we're familiar with this age old trick, which ensures that the splitter will do what they can to ensure the pancake is actually evenly split.  After all, the other party will pick which half they get.

Negotiation is a two way street, but if both parties can approach the proceedings from the 'glass half full' perspective, they have everything to gain and nothing to lose.