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Ok, before I explode, background: The Appalachian Mountain Club runs a trail crew in addition to their hut system in the White Mountains. It's a crew of about 18 to 22 people who live up in a dorm at Pinkham 2 days out of the week and live on the trail the other 5. They patrol and maintain all the trails of the White Mountains. The first two weeks of the job involve hiking every inch of White Mountains trail and checking for work to be done. Doing that in two weeks, they go like 20 miles a day. The rest of the summer is spent hiking in to a work site on monday and setting up camp not far from it. The hiking over to the work site and working on the trail all day till friday, when they pack up and hike out. I've run across them before while hut hopping in the Whites and in the huts. The hut crews are pretty darn hard core, but these guys are insane.
So, really, living in the woods 5 days of the week all summer? What could be a better summer job? I applied to be one of them on a long shot back in February. Yesterday morning I got a call from them, that went something like this:
Trail Crew Supervisor: "Morning." Me: *grunted, I wasn't awake yet* "G'morning." TCS: "This is ___ ___, is this Daniel?" Me: *Still not awake* "Hi ___ __, Yea, it's me. What's up?" TCS: "Still want a job?" Me: *bolt upright and completely awake* "Yes... Do I have one?" TCS: "Yep."
I've idolized the trail crews of the White's since I first ran into them when I was a kid hiking the trails with my dad. And this summer I get to be one of them!! I start in a month, I... Can't... Wait...
Sounds like a lot of fun. I've always wanted to do part of or all of the AT, but I imagine it's something I won't have the time or the money to do for some years to come. Good luck and have fun!
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I don't really have any affinity for hiking or the like, but achieving something you've always wanted to do is a great feeling. Grats, Alcon!
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I dunno if I'll have net access this summer yet, but if I do and anyone's gonna be up in the White's this summer I can try to keep this thread updated on which section of trail we'll be working on on any particular week. Maybe folks could swing by and say hi.
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See, I read the subject, and I thought they were going to be making a new movie version of the Tripods. And now my hopes have been dashed to the ground. <sniff>
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Congratulations. I think you're insane, but congratulations. (I like hiking and camping and living in the wild as much as any girl-- for a week or two at a time.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Congratulations!!! I know you really wanted this... I'm a little sad that I won't get to see you at all, but I'm insanely happy for you!
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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If you have cell reception but not internet access, you could call one of us and we'd type up a post for you. Or at least I would, and I bet some one else would volunteer.
Congrats on the job.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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So I got an email from my soon to be boss, this summer's trail master. You can read about it here on my new wordpress blog if it pleases you. I'm gonna try and find a computer when we get off the trail every week and give weekly updates. I'll post em there on the blog, but probably bump this thread and maybe quote their openers or something. I start on May 20th, I can't wait.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Here we go, leave it on the back burner, take it to the dry town. Yeah, here we go!
I'm off! Tonight I'm at my grandparents, tomorrow it's into the woods with me! Next time I post it'll be from Pinkham lodge. Catch you all on the flip side Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Alright, I think I finally have a long enough time on the computer to write a full post. The first few days have been incredible, but there hasn’t hardly been a free moment. Up until now it’s been a lot of training and a lot of sitting around listening to lectures (AMC policy, history, as well as interesting training stuff).
The first day I got here it was “throw your shit in your room, here’s an axe head, go to town”. I had to ‘hang’ my axe. This involved removing the wood from the previous handle, selecting a handle, fitting it to the eye of the axe, driving a wedge in the top, sharpening the axe and shaving down the handle to fit my grip. It’s a very long and time consuming process, and I loved every minute of it. The axe is my personal axe, I’m responsible for it’s care and it’s my primary tool on the trail. It’s a single bit axe with a slightly weird head: it’s got a large beard. I think that’s fairly fitting. I picked out a 36 in handle (hickory, they’re all hickory cause it’s the best handle wood), but I think it might be a bit long, so I might grab a shorter one and rehang it when I have a nice chuck of free time.
That Sunday night we went out to a nearby Irish Pub and ate pizza/drank beer (those of us of age… two months… two months…). There was live irish music, apparently the same band plays there every Sunday night and we go there every Sunday night. We’re loud and roudy singing and clapping along to all the songs and the band knows and loves us and caters to us. It was amazing. I can’t wait till next Sunday.
Yesterday we went out to the crew cabin. It’s a log cabin out in the middle of the woods. It was built by trail crews in the ’70s. The land is leased by the crew alumni ascociation and AMC has nothing to do with it. It’s our hang out spot where we go to wind down. We had some first year olympics there before walking out there and partying a whole bunch. This was my first really experience with humping rocks down hill. “Humping” just means moving a rock by hugging it and then putting all of your weight and strength into moving it. These were no small rocks. But moving them around was a blast.
Today was axe day. We went out to the home of a professional boat builder and axe fanatic. He knows a ton about the history, care and use of axes and taught us all he could in a short time. We also got to do a ton of chopping on his land, and helped him move a crapload of firewood. It was a good day.
Tomorrow is our first patrol. No more training, now it gets real. I can’t wait.
Oh and TFC stands for Trail F***ing Crew. At least that's the only answer I've ever gotten to that question.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Today was our first patrol. It was awesome. It was running down the trail with an axe in my pack. When we came to blow downs the person in the front of the line would stop to clear the blow down and everyone else would keep going. We leap frogged each other down 9 - 10 miles of trail over two small mountains, chopping anything in our ways to pieces.
I'm no where near in shape. I definitely died today and spent a large portion of the day last in line huffing and puffing trying to catch up. But I still loved every minute of it and got to clear some pretty big blow downs. I have the blisters to prove it: I got to use my axe a bunch today. Now I'm exhuasted, dirty and scratched... and euphoric. (Endorphin is a wonderful thing isn't it?)
My axe came unhung twice today and I had to rehang it right there on the trail using chips from the chopping as wedges. It worked well enough but I'm gonna have to give it a really good rehang this week end. I may just go ahead and make a completely new handle, since my current one is really a bit long and could use being shorter.
Now that I've done a patrol I actually feel like a part of the crew. I survived it. I did it. It hurt, but I made it and I actually did my part.
Couple of things I forgot to mention in the last post: I picked up my trail name on the first day "Dear Boy". I have no idea where it came from. OTL won't tell me. It's morphed since into "Deer Boy" and "Deebs" in addition. Oh, and I have a mohawk now. It's sorta the only trail crew uniform, though not required it's highly recommended. I figured I've been long haired, bald and most things in between. May as well give it a shot.
All I have for now. Tomorrow's another day of laying around listening to lectures (*snore*) and then this weekend is WFR (Wilderness First Aid) training. Next week: we patrol.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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Tomorrow is going to be a lot worse (physically) but I'm very happy for you. It sounds like a really cool job, except for the mohawk part. I want to try to join them when I get older, it sounds like an awesome experience.
Let me know if you get to keep your axe at the end of it.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2006
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So I survived my first week of patrols. My feet and hands are blistered, but I'm alive. The patrols were generally about 10 miles. We had one 20 mile patrol (actually it was about 17 miles) that had a crapload of blowdowns. It was seriously about every 20 yards that I was hitting a downed tree trunk. My hands were mildly blistered until then, after that day they were really blistered. Half way through I started wearing gloves to try and protect them, I'd given up on taping the blisters even.
Monday's patrol was brutal. It was up and over Mt. Jefferson. 5700 ft. Beautiful, but I couldn't stop to enjoy the views. It was probably only about 10 miles, but it was a TON of up and down, cause we went up and over Jefferson, then down Six Husband's trail in the Great Gulf wilderness (steep, terrifying trail and we took it at high speed), and then back up to the five mile marker on the Mt. Washington autoroad. So much up and down. I returned from that exhausted and dehydrated.
Tuesday's went much better. It was about 13 miles along mostly flat ridgeline. It was beautiful, even though we weren't that high. There weren't too many blow downs and we went over about 5 or 6 little peaks that were just along the ridge. Most of the ridgeline hovered between 3800 ft and 4000 ft probably.
Wednesday's patrol was the big one. Started at 8:30 am, got out of the woods at 10:13 pm. We walked out in a group using headlamps. The patrol was already 17 miles long. It was mostly flat ridgeline stuff, but it was new trail so there was a blow down every 30 yards or so. Between all that practice and Steve's expert teaching I feel like I'm much better at chopping now. At about 6 pm we were still 5 miles out and we had to go up and over a 4000 ft mountain before going down and out. Steve fooed for the group to quit working on blow downs and we got together and slowly hiked our way out. We got to the top of the mountain by about 8 pm, it was still light out and then we went down. The mountain was in cloud so the light hung around for quite a while. By 9 pm it was dark enough that we all used our headlamps. Hiking in the grey mist before it got dark was really cool. I felt like I was on Weathertop or approaching Rivendell or something. Hiking in the dark wasn't bad, but it was also wet, which sucked. It started raining on us at about 5 pm and kept it up till just before we got out. After that patrol we came back to Hutton, stuffed ourselves with food and passed out.
Thursday was a skills day, thank god. We learned about quarrying and setting rocks and how to do drainage patrol.
Today was my first drainage patrol. It moved much much slower than a normal patrol cause there were a ton of drainages and they take forever to clean out (we're only supposed to take five minutes, but they don't let us take watches out there so... yeah, there are a lot of things about TFC that don't make sense). It was also a friday. It was about 10 miles long, we got out at about four. It wasn't bad. Now it's the weekend, hallelujah!! I need to run to go get dinner now.
And I do get to keep my axe at the end of it I think Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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