Willy, Willy, Willy …
Posted by SCC on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009.
Deer Hill and Crew #10
Our first day was spent packing tools and food onto horses. The intrepid beasts, lead by Denny and his little helper Luke, carried our supplies the five miles into our camp site.
We spent the majority of our hitch working the two and a half miles of trail that our sponsor Don Kelly had flagged out for us. We enjoyed the chance to build solid check steps and wonderful water bars in the beautiful Weminuche wilderness area. It was especially rewarding to hear the hikers and horse packers using the trail thank us and complement our work.
Halfway through the hitch we got a staff visit and an awesome lesson on using cross cut saws.
For our couple days we were joined by a group of high schoolers from Deer Hill Expeditions. After some quick safety training they split up into small groups and helped us with some of our structures. They quickly picked up on the basics of rock work and showed their impressive work ethic.
As our hitch wrapped up we said goodbye to the Deer Hill kids, who were planning on spending another half day removing berm, and started the hike back to the trailhead. The beautiful weather, a welcome change from the perpetual rain outside of Pagosa and the natural beauty of the wilderness area had us excited to return; as soon as we got a few days of rest back in Durango.
