This past week the team and I were working and camping in the BEAUUUUTIFUL South Colony Lakes Basin at a campground near the base of Humboldt Peak. Let's have a look around and get acquainted with the site shall we!?
First, we must venture over the great bridge that crosses the creek running alongside our site!
Ah, yes, and just on the other side is the kitchen! Here we find Emily and Mr. Tri slaving over a delightful mixed potato cheese soup
And a bit farther down the path, a charming and spacious tent village!
Yup, just the typical scenery in a day in the life of Water 2... but wait something's missing. We've completely forgotten about the WAG system, the teams bucket bathroom! We really can't pass over something so critical soooo...
Here she is! (Thanks Emily for the photo!) It's interesting to think back before this project began and how all of Water 2's fellow Americorpsians just couldn't get past one simple detail of our project, "You have to poop in bags!?!?" Yes, yes it's true, during our stays in areas without toilets or porta potties, we have to use the WAG system (I don't remember what it stands for?) of buckets and bags as part of efforts to fulfill "Leave No Trace" camping requirements. It isn't always an enjoyable process, but we gotta save all of the animals and all of the woods and all of nature so, you know, no big deal. But seriously people, get past the poo. There's a lot of great things happening on this project, let's take a look at this weeks highlights!
Our work this week was on several of the campsites in the Basin, finishing them up from work in years past so that they can be ready to go for this summer's season. We're told that at times the area can have over 500 people camping and hiking at once. It's a popular spot with trails to several 14,000 ft peaks and a prime camping spot anyway with a variety of gorgeous trees and vegetation and the creek that rushes right through the site. It was a week of hard work for sure, harvesting dirt, wheel-barrowing up to sites, lifting and transporting large rocks and boulders, picking at rocks and roots and dirts and things, but we finished what we came to do and had some excellent results! Let's take a look!
A few people put in these beautiful steps and the retaining/guiding rock wall on either side of them to direct future campers to the proper trail up to the site!
We completed two tent pads. One we filled with dirt and a layer of woodchips on top. Jeff, Dani, and Brandon completely installed another, from laying the timbers, digging up boulders in their way, and finally filling and leveling the finished tent pad!
Check out THIS camp hair!!
My favorite project this week was installing timber stairs to complete a staircase that was started previously and never finished. Here's a nice shot of the whole gang on the finished steps!
We got pretty lucky this week and ended up being able to take an afternoon off work to go and try to hike Mt. Humboldt, one of the 14ers in the area! It was like 10 miles round trip or something like that and a huuuuge elevation gain and ended up taking forever and being incredibly challenging. There is still snow at that altitude and we lost the trail in several places making our journey a truly epic one. I kind of felt like I was going to die on the mountain and started hearing the cawing of the vultures and crows that were congregating in hopes of snatching just a taste of my decomposing body before it turned to ash and dust... but I suppose that's a bit dramatic. It was so worth it! So beautiful!
Here's where we make the mistake of going straight toward the peak through the never ending boulder field!
The rock shelter at the peak was perfection! It provided an exceptional barrier from the fierce winds and we found a Geo-Cache!
Yaaaaaaayyyyy!
After the work in the Basin was completed Friday, we came back down to Colorado Springs to do our Day of Service at Garden of the Gods on Saturday. Day of Service is where we, as a team, are supposed to organize an event where community members can come out and volunteer with a local non-profit. We had an exceptional turnout with 10 or 11 non-Americorpsians, mostly teenagers, and got some seeding and matting done to "naturalize" and eliminate a large social trail in the park.
Today, we got to relax a bit in the morning and hang out downtown in the Springs and enjoy the lovvvvvvely day and then this evening had a huge feast at the home of our Americorps Deputy Director. We just got done packing up and organizing all of or stuff for our departure for our next hitch in the southern Bear Creek area tomorrow morning. This is our back country project so we'll be hiking about 3 miles into our campsite and staying there for 12 days straight. Our work is supposed to be some trail maintenance and construction and possibly some more erosion mitigation work like we did our first hitch. Hopefully I'll have a plethora of extraordinary photos of wild bears in action for you in two weeks! Don't get your hopes up though.... because I probably won't. Until then!
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