Hitch #6 Bear Brook State Park aka Home

My latest hitch was originally planned to be at Kingston State Park, but due to funding issues that project was put on hold. So instead of driving to a new location we stayed at Bear Brook to do projects around camp. This environment has many benefits as far as hitch life goes. For instance, rather than packing our tents and setting up camp we just stay in our cabins with our beds and all our gear at our reach. While we still have a separate amount of hitch food and dishes, we use the camp kitchen, fridge, and dry storage area. We also have the luxury of showers, washer and dryer, bathrooms, and comfortable couches to relax on after work. All of these things are usually not even imagined while on hitch, often the only time we go indoors on hitch is if we drive to town to get food or wi-fi.

We had a variety of projects, most of which had to do with preparing the camp for next year. So we cleared trees along the road and parking lots to make more space for snow plowing and parking. Since we've seen how skinny the road becomes when the snow is continually packed alongside it for 4 months, I know our clearing will be very helpful for next year. We also split firewood for days and have a few sizable stacks. We did a few other odd projects, such as adding a ramp to a bog bridge and prepping an area for a satellite dish to be installed. We had a few days early on that were the hottest of the summer, but now the weather has cooled significantly. Today was the first day that felt like fall is in the air with the temperature barely getting above 60s.

Tomorrow we pack out for hitch #7. I will be co-leading the crew that is traveling to White Lake State Park, where we will be preparing material for a volunteer day and building a bridge. Quality over quantity will be the object of this hitch. I'm looking forward to doing more carpentry work and having plenty of time to do our highest quality of work. I'm also looking forward to being near the lake, even though one night is forecast to be in the 30s, I'm sure the days will be warm enough to take a dip.

With only 2 hitches left I'm beginning to feel the end edging closer. I'm starting to think about having to say goodbye to all the friends I've made here. Part of me is trying to avoid those thoughts and just focus on each day, because I know I'll tear up if I think about it too much. It's amazing to think that we've been here almost 9 months. I can hardly imagine leaving and suddenly not living here. The hard thing about falling in love with a program and a group of people is that it makes it that much harder in the end. But after our final hitches we will have about a week with everyone back together and I imagine that many more memories wait to be made during those days, as well as reliving of memories from the past year.

For now I should get to bed, staying up late will just make it that much harder to get used to waking up early again. I've got the morning off and pack out starts at 1 pm, so until then I'll start packing my gear and preparing paper work. Only one more pack out after tomorrow.

Hitch #5 White Mountain National Forest

For hitch 5 I went to Bunnell Notch Trail in the White Mountains National Forest. This trail leads to the summit of Mount Cabot, one of New Hampshire's 4,000 ft peaks. The hitch before us had started work on this trail and we returned to finish. Due to a large amount of rain in that part of the mountains, the trail becomes flooded for a good portion of the year. Our goal was to divert the water from the trail or raise the trail above the water. There are various ways to do this, most of them involving setting heavy rocks in the trail.

Overall in 10 days we set roughly 33 rock steps, 2 3 rock staircases, 8 rock waterbars, cleaned over 30 hand built drains, cleared 1 1/2 miles of corridor (cutting branches/vegetation to give width for the trail), and built 4 bog bridges of 20 ft each. We were very lucky to only have rain for our first day, which included our hike in, and for a couple hours 2 days after that. 

The night before our day off we hiked to a cabin near the summit of Mount Cabot and spent the night before taking our time hiking down another trail the next day. Between hiking the 1.5 miles from our campsite to the trail head multiple times, the roughly 9 miles on our time off, and the 6 miles on Mill Brook Trail to get to the site of the bog bridges, I estimate we hiked well over 30 miles.

My next hitch will be at Bear Brook, which is nice because I get to stay in my cabin and I have access to our facilities. The work will be various projects around the park, from trail work to chopping firewood for winter to clearing brush to make plowing easier. After that just 2 hitches until I'm finished here.