Workshop 8-25

Well, this weekend was certainly interesting!

We showed up on Friday for the Advanced Stone Work workshop taught by Peter Jensen, with slight drizzles and heavy fog. However, at just about the time we got down the mountain to the worksite the rain started. It quickly got very heavy, so we were just huddled under the tarp. After maybe a half an hour huddled under the tarp, we heard thunder, and the rain got harder yet. We do usually work in rain, at least light rain if not torrential downpours, but lightning is when we have to cut it off, obviously. Using metal tools and standing near the lightning rod/high line is certainly not a good idea. So, we had to call it. We stood around a little time after calling the day's work waiting for the rain to let up and were deciding the plan of action for the next day. It was decided to put up a tarp over the work area for safety reasons- you can work in the rain but there comes a point where everything get too slippery to do anything. Attendees today were- Me, Dan, Eddie, Peter and volunteers David Hogenauer, Mike Garrison and Tom Carr.


Of course, shortly after we left, the rain stopped! Isn't that the way?

After that, the new Americorp intern here and I went to the tool shed to empty the old ATC trailer and move everything into our shed. Our new intern is Dan Houser, and I hope to get him contributing to the blog here too, especially because I won't be here for 2 weeks very soon. I will be spending a week on the Clearwater Sloop and then another week at an Student Conservation Association event (The SCA is the program that I am interning through). I will finally be back here in mid September.

Saturday- The tarp did a great job at letting the ground under the crib wall get dry and so the work went smoothly. They got a dencent part of the wall done and even put in a step. Dan and I spend much of the day working on another section of the trail and shuttling gravel down to their worksite. We both are nearly novices at this work and their work went much faster and smoother then ours, but we got a base rock set and moved more rocks into the right area to become wall in the future. Attendees this day were David, Tom, Dan, me and Peter. Eddie stopped by momentarily w/ some people from the Applachian Trail Conservancy to show them the work so far.

Sunday- I was not there this day, I was at another event but it sounds like much more work got completed as well, despite the torrential downpours on this day as well. In all, Peter said that 50 sq feet of wall was built, as well as at leastone step. GOOD JOB! Attendees this day were David, Tom, Mike, Dan,and Peter.