Trail work volunteering

In keeping myself 'relevant' in my old age, I've been volunteering for the last few years with a varied array of organizations.  You'll find me at Bioneers this year and soon at TEDx.  But for now I've discovered a new passion of mine and it's been the highlight of my year:  PCTA trail crew.   It's by far the best, healthiest and beautiful volunteer work I've ever done. 

 This pic is the work crew at a bridge building project on the John Muir Trail outside of Mammoth.   see if you can find me... (answer at the end)





After two years of going through their Trail Skills College in Truckee, I've mastered a few things - like tool sharpening, hauling big rocks, brushing with the McCoy (ahem... McCloud :-) and swing an ax and a pulaski pretty good.  Nothing beats hauling up two 30lb rock bars, a pack, safety gear (aka sweating) up a switchback laden trail to a work site.  Peer pressure keeps me going :-)

Here's a few pics from my latest outing at Red Meadows (mammoth) where we rebuilt 3 bridges and redid about 300yds of feeder trail.









PS:  I'm the 6th dude from the left...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

winning

Image
What does it mean to win?  Are you winning right now?  At what?    Or, are you losing right now?  How does that feel? Winning means different things to different people.  A lot of it depends on culture, age, background, profession, and ... well, your personal view  Defining winning in sports is easy.  As John Madden said   (or was it Vince Lombardi?)     'winning is everything' .  There's not a single sports team out there that doesn't want to win.  Rare, are teams that require maintaining their ethics, morality, kindness, etc over winning at all costs.  I can think of a few like the Chicago Bulls perhaps?  I can also think of the other extreme like the Baltimore Ravens or Dallas Cowboys or Oakland Raiders at certain points in their history that could care less about their teams members' off-field records like accomplices to murder, weapons & drug charges, domestic abuse, etc.   If winn...
Read more

largest collective human experience ever...

Image
The 2018 World Cup (WC) just concluded with well over 3 billion people watching worldwide (it was 3.2b in 2014). The USA viewership was down 44% from 2014.   The WC happens every four years with 32 countries competing in the world oldest sport. It used to be called the beautiful game and this year one team returned that moniker to some its former glory.  I have a lifetime of soccer behind me from NCAA and i n 1954 I tasted my first champagne and cigar in Germany when they won the World Cup. I also celebrated four years ago when Germany won it again. I was utterly sad this year when Germany failed to make it out of group play - for the first time ever. A 2:0 loss to South Korea did them in. South Korea? I didn't even know they played soccer :-)! kiddin'... I think the reason why 3+ billion people tuned in, is because most of them played soccer at least when they were a little kid. One can roll up a piece of paper and kick it around on any surface and make...
Read more

Europ 2018 adventures

Image
This is a copy of an older posting I didn't want to lose... it's timing was March 2018. I'm starting on an 8 city, 24 day European adventure.  For those interested in following my adventures & ops... i'm keeping a blog at:    http://eurotrip33.blogspot.com.es/2018/02/barcelona-2018.html I've got a separate blog going for my 8 cities in 24 day tour of Europe... here's the link http://eurotrip33.blogspot.com/2018/02/barcelona-2018.html [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1500"] Cologne Carnival[/caption]
Read more