It seems so long ago...oh wait, it was...

Session 1 of my MCC summer went great. It went from June 13-July 10, 2010. I had a crew of all high school age boys. When you are the only girl...you get picked on...but I guess I am used to that from guys. Go figure. It was good picked on though. The fun, sarcastic stuff, so no worries.

WEEK 1: Whitefish Recreation Trail
Our first week we worked on the Whitefish Recreation Trail. It is a trail that goes around Whitefish lake. We helped build drainage systems on the trail, brushed off limbs that would hit faces of horses and people, built rock benches on a bump out, and pulled dirt down the downslope side of the trail. It was nice to see people already using the trail and thanking us as we did our work. (always motivating) It was our first week of work, so it was a bit of work hardening...getting the boys to wake up, get breakfast, make their lunches, get to work, work the whole time (and in the rain), and get back and make dinner, etc. It was something new for all of us.

We camped at some open valley that we at first weren't sure it was the right spot...but it was. As the only girl, I would have to go off a bit away and find a hiding place to pee at. On my way to a random pee spot, I found fur scattered all around this one area...yes, an open kill by a carnivore. We had already found random bones scattered around the area we were camping, so obviously there was something out there and with the way that fur was, probably a mountain lion! :)

The week went pretty good for the most part. We had one kid with the wrong attitude to be out in the woods doing this kind of work, so he ended up going home anyways. They loved making the fires at night, and it was teamwork to figure out the how to get dry situation when it rained the whole time.

I should probably explain this car wreck...So, we drive these big ol' rigs. Ours was a GMC Yukon named Zeus. We drive on a lot of mountain sides and such. And if you know me, I may drive a bit fast sometimes...still safe, but a bit fast. Anyways, we were going around a corner and all of a sudden there was a big rock in the middle of the road. So, I tried braking, but it wasn't going to stop us in time, so I turned the wheel real sharp...and this is what happened. Our rig turned over on itself several times, but before the ambulance came, I was able to hand over my camera in order to get a picture of it. Noone was hurt!

This is the story we told one of the adult crews we worked with on the last week. AND THEY BELIEVED US! The real story is that on the trailhead where we were working there was a totaled car just sitting there. Somehow I was able to convince a crew of boys to take a funny picture... They didn't do many more random funny pictures, but I got at least one!

WEEK 2: East Glacier - Fencing and Weeding

I am so glad we had the opportunity to work in East Glacier because that is now my favorite area of Montana, of the Northern Rockies. Our work here included fixing barbwire fencing on the borders of the park. Glacier National Park borders the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. There is still a dispute on where the boundaries really are. The Blackfeet think their land goes in further, while GNP has it down as another boundary. We were hired by GNP to fix the fences that have either been broken by fallen down trees or cut by the Indians to allow their free range cattle and horses to graze on the grass. GNP wants to stop this to stop the infestation of noxious weeds in the park. It's been an ongoing battle apparently. I'm not sure where I stand with it, but we were hired for a job and we did it. Most of the fencing was done before we got there, but we still got at least 2 days of fencing. Then we had to try to decide what was weeds and what was not...I still probably couldn't tell you.

We stayed at Cut Bank campground which was right be a creek/river. Unfortunately, the water is freezing! I guess when they are fed by glaciers, they tend to be a bit cold. There weren't many girls for the boys to stare at, but they still seemed to have a pretty good time. We played some rugby tag, they did some wrestling, we went bushwacking down by the river, they widdled some wood, etc. I even had them do the popsicle pushup thing where they made a square with their bodies and only hands on the ground to do the pushup (look at the picture).

Cameras don't really capture all that I saw in East Glacier. Most of my pictures here are in Many Glacier, a must visit. We hung out at this lake one day after doing some weeding. When we were done with the fencing, we went on to weeding. Weeding included going on hikes in East Glacier where our sponsor told us weeds were becoming a problem.



We took an hour lunch at this gorgeous spot in St. Mary's.

One day we were picking weeds up in Chief Mountain at a trailhead directly by the US/Canada border patrol. The boys stated they would really love to go to Canada, even to just step a foot in Canada. Why not? We could just run over there, step a foot in, and run away. They wouldn't catch us, right? As long as we were fast enough! JK Don't worry, we didn't try this approach. Instead, I went into the US border patrol office and asked them if 8 of us from Montana Conservation Corps could go into Canada and get back and without documentation. The US side had no problem, so they called the Canada border that was about 50 feet away. They had no problem, so I walked back to the rig and told the boys to come to Canada with me. We brought our helmets as our "documentation." They let us walk in a good 200 feet to get pictures by this sign. You could totally tell a difference in the people on the 2 sides. On the US side, nobody even tried to talk to us. They didn't seem to care. We got to the Canada side and one of the guy's was already joking with us that he didn't want to see us run off in different directions. Then on our way back to the states, we stopped and talked to the Canadian border patrol for a good 10 minutes. Just a difference in hospitality...

This is Chief Mountain itself. I could see a chief being up there...

This is just one of the greatest views while driving to and from work everyday.

WEEK 3: Hungry Horse National Recreation Trail
You know how our grandparents talked about having to walk to school in 10 feet of snow, uphill both ways? Well, I'm not going to exagerate quite that much. We had to hike 5 miles up the mountain side just to get to the start of our worksite. It took us about 4 hours to hike up the worksite, giving us about 1 1/2 hours (maybe 2) to work, and then head back down to camp. In other words, we didn't actually get that much work done. And on top of all that, the mosquitoes and the flies were really beginning to come out for the summer. We got to use a single handle crosscut to saw trees out of the path (probably a good 10 trees were down and in the way). We used pulaskis and pick-matticks to retread the path in different spots where the path was not quite as visible. We even got to hike through some snow during this work week. The hike was hard, but our boys did a good job...just took a little bit of motivation to hike it everyday.

On Thursday, we got stuck in a horrible windstorm on a ridge. We saw it coming, but it was hard to tell how bad it would be. But, then again, the weather changes every 5 minutes in Montana, so we should have known... Anyways, we decided to head back due to what the weather was doing, and on our way back down, the wind really picked up. Just our luck, it picked up right when we were crossing a ridge. I almost thought our smallest guy was going to blow away! "Hold on to Stan!" We all had to hold on to our helmets so they wouldn't all blow away.

Camp was nice because it was less than a half mile to walk to the trailhead to begin work. We had our pet deer, Sumpy and Sumpster, who always drank from our kitchen sump. We did Monster Races where they had to cross from line to line following certain rules. We conquered K2 and Everest at this site and found a caveman who was in hiding. Yes, that is right, a caveman. One of the boys would have marshmallows, providing him this sugar high and he would walk around camp, dragging a 'club' behind him and make caveman noises. He was good at not breaking character. Question is, did he practice at home before coming out to work with us? No one will ever know...

The fun thing about being at a camp place that is not public is that everybody seems to be more comfortable. For instance, our caveman only became a caveman in camp spots where nobody but else was around. In a picture above, one of the boys is just in his long underwear.


WEEK 4: Swan Mountain Range - Cold Lakes Trail

It was hard to believe that this was our last week of work. It was a great last week for us also. Apparently the Cold Lakes trail they had was very wet and crossed a creek several times. The Forest Service decided it would be worth it to reroute the trail up the hill more and then prevent the creek crossings and wet ground. An adult crew was already working on this trail, so they were able to show us what we needed to do. Paul trained us in using a two handled crosscut...you know, like the saw they would use in cartoons. So, we had to cut down a lot of trees and do a lot of brushing. Lots of work, but we felt productive.

On the last day, Friday, we only had a half day, so we decided to work the morning on chopping this huge root out of the path. The root was at least 6 feet wide and 5 feet high off the ground. There was no way it was going to moved by hand only. We needed our pulaskis and pick-matticks. We all took a spot around the root and began swinging our tools. Then we also began singing. We belted it out in our own random songs that came to our heads. Eventually, we all began singing together as loud as we could as we swang away. It was the best day of work in my mind, and it happened to be our last.

To start off the week was the 4th of July, so I made everybody red, white, and blue pancakes (blueberry pancakes with strawberries and whip cream on top). Then we went to the big 4th of July parade in Bigfork, the closest city to us. The parade even provided a free BBQ (hot dog and chips). They had a Santa driving a corvette. They had some small kids dressed as Superman, Spiderman, or Wonderwoman and tied them to the top of a golf cart, and so on.

We also played a game of Kick the Can at camp which was really fun. The game involves a can in the middle of the place and one person who is "it". Everybody else goes to hide in the woods around. The "it" comes around and tries to find you. If they find you, they say "Over the can on ____" and has to jump over the can before that person can kick the can. If they go over before it's kicked, the person found is in prison. They are freed from prison if somebody else is able to kick the can at any time if they are not in prison. It was pretty fun to hide in the woods, but we never got to play when it was dark because it didn't ever get dark until 11, and we needed to be in bed by then in order to wake up and work the next day.