I'm So Over Chipping

Today at Open Space, Earth 4 and 5 switched assignments. They went to do trail building and we went off and chipped. I’m really over chipping. Thankfully, we don’t have anymore chipping to do with the Forest Service, so we don’t get it every day. But still. Over it. Although we did totally power through our section of the park today. The team chained out every pile of slash so things moved very efficiently.

Yesterday was a bit more interesting. When we got to the work center, Chad had the people who didn’t go to the tanker base the day before or who didn’t go to California change into their Nomex. They were skipping PT to check out a smoke report. Travis and Coby also had to change into their Nomex because, after being on stand by last week, they were finally getting dispatched. They’re not going to California, but they’re going to some fires in western Colorado.

That left seven of us – Scott, Blake, Joanna, Chris, Harrison Jordan and me. Patrick took us on a little two-mile loop run and then we did the “Eagan” version of push ups – instead of an increasing and decreasing pattern, like 2/4/6/4/2, you just do twenty of every style. Our group went back to the spot that we’ve been cutting at for the last week. Joanna and I paired up and went off to a section to start cutting. Around 12:45, Steakly called us over the radio because one of the squads would be leaving to check up on some lightning strikes (I think?) and one of the AmeriCorps rigs was going with them. So Joanna, Blake and Harrison went off with them.

That left just Scott, Jordan, Chris and me. We had lunch before we rearranged our cutting layout. But before we could get back to cutting, Steakly had us head back to the rigs because there was a storm approaching. It started raining when we got back to the rigs and we waited it out for about an hour. I’m not gonna lie, I fell asleep. It kinda sucked to not be cutting, but I’m not going to object to an opportunity for a nap. Once it looked clear, which was around 3:00, we went back out again to cut for the remainder of our day.

I ended up cutting by myself with no swamper, so my progress was really slow. I’d cut down a tree, buck it and limb it and then I’d have to move it all into a pile. Then I’d cut another tree. Luckily, they were mostly small trees so I could move faster than if I had to take a bunch of big ponderosas or something.

When the day was over, we headed back to the work center where we met back up with the smoke-report group and the group that left while we were cutting. The smoke report people said that their assignment ended up being an extensive PT hike that was straight up in some pretty gnarly terrain. I guess I got lucky.