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?