Snoopin’ with the Snoop

Hey, I’m trying to compile a photo book and don’t remember our schedule exactly. I have 4 missing tours. Anyone remember where they go? Or any corrections if needed?

sometime was moapa/corncreek (weeding/decommissioning)
a (fourth or fifth) ash meadows
a second athel
??

1 orientation
2 12 days of planting (4 days and then 8 days)
3 trash with marco (11/19-11/21: thanksgiving)
4 rainbow gardens (11/26-11/29: nvum training)
5 rainbow gardens (12/3-12/6)
6 athel (12/10-12/17)

*christmas break*

7 mormon mountains (1/2-1/9)
8 sahara mustard arizona (1/14-1/17)
9 MLK, Hiko Wash, Rainbow (MLK(21), 1/22-1/25)
10 Corn Creek fencing (1/28-1/31)
11 Ash Meadows fencing (2/4-2/7)

12 (2/11-2/14)
13 AM f?(2/18-2/21)
14 (2/25-2/28)
15 (3/3-3/6)

16 pahranaget (3/10-3/17) (six days off)
17 trash with nccc (3/24-3/27)
18 ash meadows cattails (3/31-4/3)
19 sahara mustard weeding (4/7-4/11)
20 eglington preserve (4/14-4/18)
21 ash meadows cattails (4/21-4/25)
22 Lovell Canyon (4/28-5/1)

Republic trash services. =(

We’ve completed four trash, or partial trash, tours now, and the consistent factor is that whenever we need a dumpster, and Republic says they’ll have it there by X o’clock, it usually arrives at X+3 or more o’clock. Picking up trash and piling it on the ground next to where you want the dumpster placed becomes annoying by your fourth time. Instead of picking up once and finishing your job, we get to do it twice or more, depending on the availability and proximity of our trucks to where we’re working. This tour, cleaning out the area that is the Eglington Preserve on the N side of Vegas in Aliente, Republic managed to lose the work order on Tuesday, delaying the arrival of the dumpster until Wednesday. The preserve is currently surrounded by a construction zone and will eventually be a nature area for blind and uneducated Vegas suburbians. We grumbled much about cleaning up an area to make it nice for those who destroy the desert landscape and participate in the trashing of it in the first place. We decided it’d be much more educational to leave the trash and let them do the dirty work of cleaning it up.

Since a survey of the trash in the Preserve had not been completed before we arrived to work, we weren’t sure on the volume of trash in the 300 acres, and Adam guestimated it at coming close to filling a 20-cubic-foot dumpster. We definitely could have filled a 28-cubic-foot dumpster. Adam and Melody, and Tommy and Hillary found a truck bed that someone left in the area before it became a preserve, and since the desert wildlife had converted it into nice habitat, they left it. Excusing the truck bed, some items we found that did not fit into the small dumpster were a refrigerator and multiple rolls of old carpet.

Also on Wednesday, Jon, Tommy, and I saw one of the elusive desert tortoises.

Tuesday:

The Mojave Green (Crotalus scutulatus) is the most poisonous rattlesnake in the Mojave, and as with all young rattlesnakes, the young one is the most dangerous. Adults have learned to control the release of venom on a strike to conserve it for hunting, but the youth have not realized this, so when they attack, they release it all. Adam showed us a young mojave green he came quite close to—he had been weeding on the other side of the bush for a half hour before he noticed it—and once again reminded us not to wear both of our headphones if we choose to listen to IPods, Zunes, or other music devices while working. (Note: Adam doesn’t, but many of use do.) Later, Melody saw a 2nd (huge this time) rattler. (Perhaps the small rattler was not quite as young as we assumed; apparently the young are born in July and August…)

Dusk is falling, and the wind is strong. Given the two rattlers spotted today, I think any nighttime wanderings of mine will fall off for a bit. I have only my small LED light with me, because the one that Brendan lent me is a power-sucker. For the first time, I brought no tent on a tour but just my sleeping bag. The weather is colder than I expected, because of the chill from the wind and our elevation, but at least I brought both layers of my City Year coat. When I get home to Illinois, I want to rebuild the firepit in the garden, especially now that I know what I’m doing. The “campsite” I chose has a fire ring. I had decided to sleep next to it, but the wind is so stiff that I created a lean-to from a pallett I found next to the fire, leaning it against the cedar I’m sleeping under, and braced by a close-by yucca. Gotta watch that I don’t impale my head on a branch of the yucca when I lay my head on my pillow.

… All tucked in now. I forgot my hat, but the NCC sweatshirt is hooded. I think I’m facing NE, so I should get some good sun in the morning. Regardless, I’m setting my alarm. Now, the wind is changing directions a bit from my left to from the open area at my feet. Oh well, my bag is rated to 0 degrees.

Wednesday:

My sleeping pad blew away. I don’t want to buy another one this late in the six months and have to lug or ship it home when I go. Maybe I’ll just use the Big Timber (Slumberjack) as a pad though it is much heavier and bulkier to bring on a tour. I want to bring both my fleece blankets next tour—one to drape if need be for a wind block and one to sleep with. The ground isn’t as cold at night anymore, so sleeping without a pad may not be too uncomfortable, but the rocks would make it so.

I will miss the Nevada night sky and the lack of humidity to grey out the stars. Night falls, peace fills.

Thursday:

Melody figured out she is strong enough to lift me, and when we stopped to wash the trucks on the way back to the field station on Thursday, she and Megan attempted to throw me in a dumpster. I wriggled free. Later she said she wasn’t really going to toss me in, but I’m sure Megan would have. Ha, ha.

Atypical. Hilarious. My truck forgot me on Monday morning. I was hurriedly jotting some e-mails related to job searching in the office the morning we left for our 8-day near Alamo, NV, and Adam stuck his head into the office, saw me, and told me that my truck just left without me. When I grabbed my stuff and signed out of the e-mail program and walked out to Adam’s truck, he said he noticed my truck waiting around the corner. So he drove the truck around the corner. I thanked them for the ride and went to get in my truck, and noticed Josh sitting shotgun and pointing rapidly and repetitively in the direction of the windshield. Therefore, I wasn’t one bit surprised when the truck zipped forward out of my reach as I reached for the handle.

When I situated myself in the truck after a fair amount of chasing, Josh said he very quietly – sort of under-his-breath-like – had told Jon that I wasn’t in the truck. Humph.

Most of our tour was decommissioned road maintenance, instead of full-blown disgusing of tire tracks in the desert.

I didn’t do a good job of dating the entries in my journal for posting here.

One of the first four days of our tour, we plowed through a lot of snow. Our truck got stuck at first. When we broke for lunch, I played in the snow. I was coming down the side of a hill and tripped, landing elbow, knee, and face first. And laughed. All the snow that somehow found its way into my boots dried within 15 minutes after I decided that I needed to let my clothing dry before heading out.

On the 15th (Saturday), we caught the weather forecast at the Shell station that lives near the intersection of highways 375 (Extraterrestial Highway), 318, and 93 (Great Basin Highway). It said a storm system was going to invade, bringing snow down to 3500 feet. With our campsite at 5500 feet, we moved the kitchen when we got back to camp. And wrapped up the tools in one of the tarps. When I woke up the 15th, after I punched up on my tent roof to knock off the snow, I looked out and we got about two inches. Wheeeee. I had camped nestled in some pine covered boulders, and after putting on the snow pants I brought on a whim, slid down to camp.

Ok, so I didn’t get to slide that far, but there was ice on the final rocks before getting to the kitchen, and I did decide to slide down those six-foot tall rocks.

This tour was awesome, as per usual. The forecasters warned of the strong and moist Pacific storm system, so I packed for freezing, snowy weather. We got wind. I’m not talking a 5-10 mph breeze, but 25-30 sustained, with higher gusts.

10. If our supe says one mile, it’ll take an hour walking at about 3 miles an hour. If he says 2 miles, it will be a wild goose chase that takes 4 hours.

9. Wild horses in the desert are no longer a myth made up by the BLM to protect land. We actually saw some, and Burke and Megan walked with them, kinda. I’ll add pictures when I upload them.

8. If I don’t bring my prosumer zoom camera, I’ll want it. If I do bring it, I won’t use it. Solution: keep it in the truck (per Bryan).

7. Even if you’re getting back to the field station from a long, hard 8-day tour, Chad will put you to work, with a mischievous smile, at any chance, and you can’t complain because he spread 26 tons of gravel on our parking lot by himself…

6. A “few rolls of barbed wire and a couple of T-posts” one mile out in the wilderness equals 11 rolls of barbed wire and about the same number of grouped-by-four T-posts. For a 9-person conservation crew, that adds up to bruises all along the hip and shoulder area, a few moments (or a half hour) of frustration, and extrememly sore shoulders. And for me, an extremely sore right bicep. One T-post weighs approximately 8-10 pounds. Lugging 40 pounds a mile through the wilderness is easy when the weight is on your lower back hips, like as with a pack. Having to carry 40+ pounds a mile through the wilderness in your arms (twice)…builds muscle. Yay!

5. If it’s cold and windy when it’s time to make dinner, dinner will be a scavenge-for-yourself affair.

4. If you (like me) are of a slight build and are on a 9-person conservation work crew of 6 guys, then at some point or another, you will probably be bench pressed. Dave’s video forthcoming when I get a copy. I never got a copy from Dave; here’s Jon’s:
I got a copy of the video from Jon.

3. If you (like me) have been bench pressed by your co-workers, they will begin volunteering you and your body type for other adventures, such as you climbing into 8 rolls of barbed wire in order to roll them a mile out of the BLM wilderness and back to the truck. Axels are not allowed in the wilderness, but the reasoning was that since the rolls would not be rotating around me, and I would be moving at the same speed and direction as them, I would not be an axel and the process would not be illegal.

2. My Eureka AlpineLite 2XT 4-season tent stood up to the wind and cold. I did have it guy-lined to the wilderness border fence, but it didn’t move and it didn’t look like the fence stopped it from moving (since it had survived strong winds before I guy-lined it). Other tents were upside-down, moved 6-feet or so, or damaged by a pole through a fly.

1. Don’t EVER squat downwind of a folding table on a windy day. See, I was securing the empty water coolers and the wind kicked up some dust in my face. I turned away from the wind and the next thing, I heard a big thud on my head, and I was lying in the dirt no longer holding the water coolers I had tied to the table that hit me in the head and blew almost into the wash when the wind picked it up. Where was Dave and his movie camera?

The Great Basin Institute, under which lies my organization the Nevada Conservation Corps, is also in charge of the Nevada Visitor Use Monitoring program, which has employees conduct exit surveys at public land sites. When they offered the crews of the NCC a chance to be one of those employees, I signed on, both from an interest and experience perspective, but also of course for some extra cash.

My first trip out on Sunday was at Ash Meadows South, about 22 miles west of Pahrump and within five miles of California. The sun was shining, wind was calm, and it reached about 50 degrees, so I actually interviewed about 14, with about 10 agreeing to be interviewed. Sweet!

Each interview setup is a 6-hour day, so I had plenty of time to unwind and recharge while out there. Took some photos too:

Blogged with Flock

The NCC has not told us exactly how close to Ely we will be over our 8-day tour that begins on the 2nd, but that we will be somewhere between Mesquite and Ely for the duration. So, being my curious self, I googled “snow cover,” and came up with USDA NRCS’s SNOTEL for Nevada in the webpages of the National Water and Climage Center.

On the interactive map, Ward Mountain is clickable just south of Ely (and is the southern most point availabe to click). At least 16 inches of snow will greet us if we travel as far north as Ward Mountain. Over the last 7 days, the higest high was 40 degrees and the highest low was 22. The lowest high was 10, and the lowest low was 0.9. The highest daily average was 24 with the lowest being 4.

Layers, layers, layers!!!!! (and snow toys!!!)

Blogged with Flock

The End of All Things Athel, for us, for now.

Last night four of us from Brian’s truck zonked out in the truck to music from Josh’s Zune when we got back to the campsite. Megan must be some kind of super hero or something, as she hopped out of the truck as soon as we got back. (Brian drives one truck and Adam drives the other. Brian’s truck usually contains him, Josh, Megan, Jay, and me, with Adam’s usually being him, Melody, Burke, Dave, and Jon.) We had stopped in town before coming back to the campsite, and many ate at McDonalds. I only got ice cream and cherry pie, thinking I would eat back at camp. But I fell asleep. I roused around 10pm only to haul my sleeping bag into the truck. I think I may have woken Jay, as he left shortly after I got settled, and by 10:30 I was the only one in the truck.

Today before heading back to the NCC field office in Vegas, we helped Adam’s half get rid of as much of the Athel along the road as we could accomplish before we left. Yesterday, his half traveled one 1/2 mile, dealing with thick Athel stands and crazy, twisted, and thick single Athel monsters. Given the choice between the two, I’m glad I made the 11 mile hike yesterday. At least my scenery changed. And, we saw the port-a-potty we had hiked by last week (the one on Map 3 ») across the lake, when we stopped to lunch on top of one of the hills at the edge of Lake Mead.

Christmas party at the NCC field office: Eric’s crew made an awesome rap. Wish I had a video recording.

Our next tour is from 2 Jan to 9 Jan, and then my sister is coming to visit! Yay! I’m not quite sure the details of the next tour, but I believe I heard that we will be road decomissioning somewhere south of Ely, NV, which last time I checked, had a low of 3 below. Brrrrrr.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. 11 miles. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Pics from earlier in the week:

Ugh.

That’s about all I can muster today. I’m not carrying my camera with me anymore on this tour. Our new site is long, hilly, and tough. We hiked out to about three miles treating Athel today (making it six round trip). And tomorrow we have to start from that three mile marker and work our way farther still.

Warm showers are one of the best things. The campground host told us we could use the showers, and so I had our truck drop me off at the 20-minute-walk-from-the-campsite after work, having brought everything I needed with me. True that we’ll be home Monday night, but after I’ve been sick awhile, I enjoy scrubbing off. And one of the best feelings is coming out of a steamy hot shower, bundling up, and walking a mile in 35 degree weather. Invigorating!

So, suprisingly I hadn’t missed dinner when I got back to the campsite at 6:30, which was only because it was the most complicated meal that we had made so far since we started at the end of October. Lots and lots of dishes. Breakfast burritos, mmmmmm.

Most of us lumbered off before the dishes were washed as is usual. Those of us left decided a schedule is required on future tours…

If you’re cold, the best thing to do is be active and move around so that you’re warm when you tuck in for the night. Playing hot coals is one way to achieve an increased body temperature. >:)

Need lots of rest for tomorrow.
Goodnight.