It has been another two weeks and I have been out on a few more hitches as well as done some white water rafting and some climbing on my breaks. My hitches so far have been mostly simple trail clearing. We hike a trail, each of us carrying either a crosscut saw or an axe, and when we come upon a tree across the trail we remove it. We have also done a trail re-route where we cut everything out to make a new trail because the previous one went through a swamp. The snow is still high in the higher elevations which means we cannot cross passes and therefore much of our district is still closed off. Once the snow melts, which should be in the next few weeks, we will be able to get out to the more remote spots.

We were able to go on a whitewater rafting trip as a test group so that the company could work out a new overnight trip they wanted to do. We rafter the yellowstone through some pretty intense rapids to a spot on the river where they had a camp set up. They cooked us dinner and we all hung out around a campfire. We then woke up in the morning and rafted a rather calm section of river to our pick up. They then drove us to a resort hot springs where we ate lunch and swam in the hot-spring-fed-pool for a few hours.

Here are some of my favorite pictures.


This is Lake Vernon, a lake at the end of one of the trails we cleared.

These peaks are mount index and pilot. They can be seen from many different places in the area.

This is me rock climbing at Allenspur. It is the highest rated climb I have done at 5.10a.

This flower is Mission Bell.