Day 3: June 23, 2009

"I feel like I'm at a Super WaWa."  --Ethan Zubkoff

After an early breakfast (raspberry white chocolate scones!), we made our way to Fort Abercrombie State Park to start our trail work.  We had a brief orientation session with Andy and park ranger Kevin Murphy, both of whom explained the basics of tool safety.  The tools themselves have fantastic names: the pick, the pick mattock, the Pulaski, the McLeod, the lopper, the rock bar, the bow saw.  Each serves a specific purpose, and just saying the names a few times made us feel like genuine trail workers.  

We worked in two teams during the morning.  One team cleared small brush -- like salmonberry plants -- and larger objects, like stumps and fallen trees.  The other team did rock work -- pulling up large rocks from a new trail -- as well as restoration work, which involved covering an old trail with moss and tree limbs. 

After lunch, we worked as a group to cut and excavate six drainage ditches on the trail.  The trail itself has some steep grades; if the water runs down them too quickly during large runoff events, the trail erodes.  The ditches were about fifteen feet long, two feet wide and six inches deep, and the soil was incredibly rocky.  The work is strenuous and quickly generates sore fingers, wrists, and shoulders, but the "office space" -- surrounded by moss-covered spruce trees overlooking the Gulf of Alaska -- makes it easy to stay motivated.

After dinner, we walked through the woods to nearby Crow Beach, where we spent a few hours walking the beach, taking photos, and having wheelbarrow/piggyback races.  The stones on the beach were perfect for skipping, though a few of us need some work on our technique.  Our last stop of the night was in a traditional Alaskan banya, an outdoor cedar sauna/steamroom.  From the door of the banya, we overlooked Monashka Bay -- not bad for Day 3.

We're having a little trouble posting large numbers of photos, so hopefully we'll solve that problem in the next day or so.  Here's a nice group shot of our time on the beach tonight, with Pyramid Mountain in the background.