Update

It's been awhile since my last post. Let me catch you up on what I've been doing. My internship with the Student Conservation Association ended May 17th. It was an amazing journey for me. I learned so much about how to live in the wilderness. I also learned a lot about how to live with less money than I've been used to. It was a timely lesson as prices for everything are soaring these days.



After saying goodbye (for now) to my crew I moved to Riverside, CA for the summer. I'm living at the home of Chris and Karen Roholt. Chris is the Wilderness Planner at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that gave our crew its assignments throughout the year. I am going to work for him at the BLM for 60 days working on the water source data my crew collected during the 8 month internship.

While there I will learn more about GIS (Geographic Information System) and specifically the ArcGIS software that is used in the industry. My goal is to get enough experience to get a job where I can both collect data in the field and analyze it in the office.

I got to spend two weeks back in the Midwest. I managed to spend time in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana. After three weddings with friends and family, lunch with old work buddies and hanging out in my home town, I spent time with almost everyone I know!

I'm hoping to still work on skills while living in Riverside, though I don't plan on having a fire pit or digging out a shelter in the Roholts' backyard!

Tomorrow I get to spend my birthday at the beach. My friend Melissa and I are going to watch the AVP (volleyball) tour at Hermosa Beach. I'm hoping to get in a pick up game or maybe fill in for an injured player (*Announcer*: "Can anyone in the crowd play volleyball?") during the featured match.

Spring Time in the Mojave

How lucky I am to be interning in the Mojave this year. Weeks ago I heard that do to the relatively copious amount of rain this winter that the flower bloom should be the greatest in 5 or more years. My crew and I got to experience the bloom for 5 days of hiking last week. I took pictures of many of the 30-40 flower species I saw.

Hairy Sand Verbena


A type of Phacelia


Various flowers including a few types of primrose and Hairy Sand Verbena


Desert Dandelion


Yellow Cups


Purple Mat and Cooper Goldflower



On one of our hikes I came across these awesomely huge yucca plants that I'd never seen before.

Giant Nolina (approximately 12 feet tall)


Giant Nolina



The hibernating creatures have also started to emerge from hiding. I also almost stepped on a snake while hiking. He was out sunning himself and didn't notice me. It wasn't a rattlesnake thankfully. It was just a little guy that I haven't identified. It's definitely an exciting time in the desert!

Hitch #10: Pacific Crest Trail Monitoring

For our 10th hitch my crew was tasked with monitoring/inventorying the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). We split into two teams to cut the amount of trail to monitor into two 47 miles sections. Rosy and I volunteered for the southern section which was supposed to be tougher because of the lack of water sources, the heat and the numerous OHV (off-highway vehicle) intrusions on the trail. That left Miz, Monika and Kevin for the northern section. The plan was to meet at a spring in between the two starting points in 5 days.

A map I made of Rosy's and my trip using the GPS data we collected. I plotted the OHV intrusions (yellow dots) to give you and idea of how bad a problem it is.


Our packs were heavy because we had to carry water for two and a half days for drinking and cooking. Our first guaranteed water was 22 miles from the start. Adding more weight was the extra gear we had to take to perform the monitoring including the GPS device with extra batteries and charging equipment, a heavy two way radio and a thick pack of paper to take notes on. To add even more weight we had to carry a sizable first aid kit and water filter. Our saving grace was that after 32 miles we crossed a major highway where we left our truck with half our water, food and gear. The other crew had to carry everything from the start although they split gear between three people and didn't have to carry as much water since there were more water sources.

The first day we met at the field office and talked with the BLM folk about the mission. After all the discussion, planning and driving we made it to the trailhead at about 2:30pm. We got in about 5 miles that afternoon which was nice because that day didn't count towards our 5 days. We realized that night that neither of us knew how to work our stove very well. Either that or the pump was broken. We never got it to work during the trip. We opted to make a small cooking fire instead which worked well. We also realized that our radio didn't work so we wouldn't be able to communicate for our 6pm check-in with the other team.

The next day we headed from the valley into the hills. It wasn't long before we were stopping every 50-100 meters to collect data on an OHV intrusion. You can see in the map above the mass of yellow dots between the first two camp sites. It was really ridiculous how many there were. If we were really to mark every one we would have stopped even more frequently.

Dirtbikers tearing up a whole new area! They are considered the greatest threat to the Desert if not all wilderness areas in the US.


It was often a challenge to stay on the PCT because OHVers had made it indistinguishable from their trails in many places. We came to a small hill that had a route on either side and one going straight over. Since there was no route marker we choose the right path which ended up being the wrong route. After awhile we discovered this and found our way back to the trail.

Also in this area there were many trail washouts. The trail was completely gone due to erosion. Most washouts occurred in a sandy section where it is nearly impossible to maintain a trail. It was not easy walking through these with heavy packs.

One of the 23 washouts we hiked through and documented. The whole trail is sloped with no horizontal surface to walk on and in the middle you can't even see signs of a trail anymore.


Near the end of the day we approached a higher elevation (>5000 ft) area and came across our first snow. Since we got to it late in the day it was soft and we sunk in most steps we took.

Rosy knee deep


Fortunately, we were able to find a pretty nice clearing to set up camp. As we were running low on water we improvised and melted snow for our cooking water and a little to drink as well.

Night 2 camp site


The following day we started out in the higher elevation pine forest with hopes that we'd seen the last of the OHV intrusions. At this point we had entered the radius of the burn area from the August 07 fire. Unfortunately the OHV intrusions didn't cease. As it turns out OHVers like to destroy forests as well as deserts!

Many OHV intrusions and burned up signs combined for a very hard to find trail. At one point we found ourselves at a dead end looking down a very steep slope and we knew at that point we weren't on the trail anymore. We looked out into the distance and saw that the trail was actually about 300 meters away on the next ridge. We decided to stop taking line data at that point until we were back on the trail. In the map above you can see the break in the red line between night 2 and 3.

In the afternoon we descended out of the mountains and into an extremely windy valley where there were hundreds of wind turbines. Here we arrived at our first water source. Originally we had planned to camp there but we got there early and since it was cold and windy, sitting around camp wouldn't be fun. We hiked on into the wind. It was about 4pm although the cloud cover made it seem like dusk when we found a refuge from the wind. We camped in a perfect ditch/wash with a large thicket for a wind block and firewood.

The morning we had a short 5 mile hike to highway 58 where our vehicle was stashed. Unfortunately our GPS battery died so didn't get data for that stretch. We made it to the truck before 10 AM and gorged ourselves on extra food we had stashed there. Since we only had 16 more miles to the rendezvous point and two days to get there we decided to take the rest of the day off. We spent the night at a county park in the mountains where we had a hell of a time starting a fire. The wood was so damp from the snow melt that it took us three tries to get one going even with the stove gas. Even then we had to constantly fan it to keep it going. Thankfully we only needed to bring water to a boil for the meal we ate.

The next morning we drove back to 58 and started the last leg of our journey. After a 1 mile flat section the next 6 miles were uphill. Eventually the trail leveled off as we hiked along a ridge. At one point on the trail we came across some interesting tracks. They were about 3 inches long and wide. I saw no claw marks present so I determined that they were Mountain Lion tracks. I didn't take the time to take a really good picture, but maybe you can see a track in the picture below.

A Mountain Lion track?


The next day we hiked 5 miles to the rendezvous point arriving early at about 10 AM. The original plan was for us all to hike 16 miles back to our vehicle at 58 the following morning. We arrived early hoping that the other team would be there too so we could knock off some miles making the final day less than 16 miles.

When we got to the meeting point it was a relief to see their camp set up. After all we hadn't communicated with them as planned for 5 days since our radio didn't work. They were however no where to be found. We sat around all day waiting for them. We were a little upset that they blew our chance to cut our 16 mile day down to 10 or 12.

When they finally came back we heard their interesting story. It turns out that 20 miles into their trip they were in such deep snow that they routinely lost the trail and had wet, cold feet all day. The final straw was when they woke up and there boots and socks were frozen stiff. They had to start a fire to thaw them out. They bailed on the assignment and hitchhiked to their truck. The beautiful part was that their truck was parked a quarter mile up the road from the rendezvous point so we didn't have to hike the 16 miles to our truck at all.

We drove out and I ate 4 Arby's roast beef sandwiches.

The End

Hitch #8: North Algodones Dunes

The work we did on this hitch was water monitoring again so I wasn't going to post about it, but it was kinda awesome because we spent one day in sand dunes.

It was one of my favorite days of hiking because the weather was warm enough to go shirtless and shoeless. The sand felt so nice on my feet. Another cool thing about the dunes is how easy it is to track animals there. One rabbit we spooked left a pretty amazing trail with a distance of 10 feet or more between one set of tracks. The most common things we saw were beetles that left a trail that looked like a bicycle track.



Rosy and I spent a lot of time playing around in the dunes. Some were 25 feet or more tall. I liked to jump off them knowing that I'd have a soft landing.



It was cool to finally experience the type of ecosystem so often thought of when the word "desert" comes to mind.

Calling the rain

Today I hope to finish my new moccassins which I will post about next.

Hitch #4: Santa Rosa Mountains

For our 4th hitch our goal was to locate and document natural water sources in the Santa Rosa Mountains. We were given aerial maps with approximate spring locations marked on them. In addition our GPS device had those approximate locations loaded in the navigation feature. Basically each day we walked up a different canyon using our GPS device to locate one or more possible water sources.

In each case finding the spot marked in the GPS device meant leaving the relatively easy terrain of the canyon and path finding up the canyon walls. Some situations were more difficult than others. Our first canyon was pretty rough. After hiking up the canyon about 3 miles our teams split into two groups so we could attempt to document groups of water sources in two different areas.

The farther group of water sources was another 3+ miles away and it was already past noon so we knew fading sunlight was going to be a problem. We decided that Kevin and Rosy would jog to the water sources with minimal supplies and I would following up at a slower pace with extra gear.

They jogged off with one liter of water, the GPS unit, a layer of warm clothes and few emergency supplies. I followed with all my stuff and extra water. Our plan was for them to mark where they left the canyon floor. Using that point I would then attempt to intercept them on their return from the water sources.

It was fun for me to track them through hard packed sand of the canyon floor. Unfortunately I was concentrating on it so hard that I missed their sign. To complicate things I found tracks that kept going that must have been someone else's. I followed those tracks until I lost those as well.

After wandering around a little I realized how inadequate the aerial map was in my situation. I pretty much had no idea how I would intercept them. I headed back to where we left their packs to meet them. I waited for about three hours as the sun went down and it got cold. I was pretty worried because I thought they should be back sooner and I knew they didn't have much water.

I finally started walking back up the canyon to see if I could find them. After 30 minutes of walking I saw their headlamps rounding the bend. It was a relief, but it wasn't over because we still had 3 miles to walk in the dark. It was a long day but we made it back safely.

That was our most intense day by far. The rest of the hitch was interesting as well. Kevin and Miz both had to leave the field with injuries after the second night so Rosy, Monika and I hiked the rest of the canyons with help from a BLM employee one of the days.

Left to right: Rosy, me, Monika


Climbing a dry waterfall in search of water.


It rained all day for one of our hikes. Luckily it wasn't too cold because each of us got wet, despite having waterproof gear on. We hiked into a canyon as far as we could go and came across a pretty cool oasis. There was no standing water despite the lushness.


Faulty waterproof jacket


Tomorrow we leave to do more water monitoring near Needles. It actually snowed at my house today. I didn't know that could happen in the desert. Hopefully we don't get rain on this trip... or snow!

Hitch #3: Piedras Blancas Lighthouse

It would be hard to find back to back hitches that could be as opposite as these last two.

Hitch 2
Elevation: 5000 ft.
Climate: dry, desert
Work: strenuous - hauling heavy rocks
Accommodations: tent/sleeping bag

Hitch 3
Elevation: sea level
Climate: humid, ocean
Work: easy - pulling plants/roots, raking dirt
Accommodations: beach house with the first bed I've slept in in two months

Fortunately, our location for hitch three had equally as beautiful scenery as hitch two. After all we stayed in a beach house on a peninsula with a lighthouse. How many houses have you stayed in where walking out both the front and back door gives you a view of the ocean? Have you ever had elephant seals living on the beach 40 yards from your bedroom window? It was awesome.

On top of Piedras Blancas lighthouse looking north.


The lighthouse and surrounding area is currently undergoing restoration to become a historical site open for the public. For a history about the site including invasive plant removal and native plant restoration check out this BLM site. Our job was to create parts of a developed trail accessible to wheel chairs. This basically means that the trail can only be so steep and required flat rest areas.

Our work was made easier because Jim, the caretaker and lighthouse keeper, already marked out the trail for us. We also had the use of mechanized vehicles to get and spread the decomposed granite as well as level the trail.

We ate good meals and watched a movie each night. It was pretty cushy. Next hitch we'll be backpacking again in the Santa Rosa mountains where it might snow. Yikes!

Piedras Blancas lighthouse viewed from the coast (I enhanced the purple sky using software)


One of the Piedras Blancas ("white rocks") at the tip of the peninsula. It is typically covered with hundreds of pelicans and other birds as well as seals and sea otters.


This is a portion of the trail we worked on. It was covered in the woolly yarrow plant you see on each side. In the distance is the house we stayed in.


Young elephant seals on the beach close to the house. The adults that are closer to 14-16 ft. long won't be around till December.

Hitch #2: Walker Pass

My crew and I worked on our second and third hitches without returning home in between which explains why I haven't posted in so long. Our second hitch lasted 8 days. It was our first backpacking trip. Luckily we had mule packers haul in water, food and other tools. We still had to pack in some tools as you can see in the picture below.

Here we unleashed our war cry as we began our 5 mile hike up to base camp. The rock bar I'm brandishing like King Leonidas of Sparta weighed over 10 lbs.


We set up a base camp where we were given special permission to have a fire. This was very nice because the nights were cold, windy and dark by 6pm or so. The fire gave us the ability to stay up till 8pm or later instead heading to the tent early. One night we even made S'mores for Kevin's birthday.

A lady named Suzanne (green hat) who volunteers on the PCT came and helped us for a few days.


Our project was to repair sections of the Pacific Crest Trail. Many volunteers help repair and maintain the trail during the year, but we were given this particular section because of the terrain. It is simply a cliff in many parts and difficult to work on. Many parts of the trail were eroding and collapsing and needed a rock wall for support.

To build a rock retaining wall we first dug out the trail until we had a solid platform to lay a foundation of large rocks. The ideal situation is when the platform is solid stone, but half the time we had to just make a platform out of the soil and hope that it would stand up to erosion.

All the stones we used were gathered from the immediate area along the trail, uphill or even downhill. As you can imagine it wasn't easy to find many large, rectangular shaped stones and then move them to the site. Each stone we laid had to fit snugly with no wobbling next to or on top of other stones since we were not using any kind of mortar.

After building up a wall we filled the trail side in with smaller crushed rocks. Then we piled the dirt back on the trail to finish it off.

Rosy, Miz and I worked on two projects. The before and after pictures are shown below.



This project took the three of us five days to complete. It is a 7 meter stretch of trail. What a relief it was to finish that sucka!



One of the best parts of the day for me was lunch time. We were privileged to have a beautiful view the whole time we were working, but during lunch I had time to relax and enjoy it.

In the valley in the distance is the town of Ridgecrest where two other crews are stationed.

Hitch #1: Surprise Canyon Monitoring and Chris Wicht Camp Cleanup

Sunday we returned from our first hitch. We were located in Panamint Valley with the lower half of Death Valley National Park to the north and east and China Lake Naval Weapons Center to the south and west. I actually got a picture of some kind of fighter jet flying by very low to the ground.

We camped in the valley and the weather was amazing. While sunny during the day, we spent most of our day time at higher elevation in Surprise Canyon where it was cooler. At night it was warm enough to sleep with my bag unzipped. Two out of four nights I awoke to sounds of a wild burro. One was grunting pretty loudly close to my tent. I looked at the tracks and it looked like the burro had laid down for awhile. Unfortunately I didn't feel like getting up to take a picture of it that night and none returned the following nights.

Our second day we hiked from the Chris Wicht camp nearly five miles up the canyon and back. We gained about 4000 feet in elevation. The hike was pretty strenuous because the trail isn't maintained. On our way up we often had to bushwhack our way through brush and often came to dead ends from which we had to backtrack. We even ended up high on the mountain a couple of times. It made for a very adventurous hike.



The coolest thing about the hike was that almost the whole time we were following a stream. There were at least two springs that fed it. It was refreshing to have flowing water in the middle of the desert. It was also nice to see familiar flora like cottonwoods, willows and cattails.

Here you can see the band of lush vegetation encompassing the stream.


I guess the coolest part really is that we were paid to go on a beautiful day hike. Our job was to identify and GPS map invasive tamarisk, flora and fauna, splits in the trail, cut vegetation and large debris (trash). It was a fun task because it forced me to be aware of my surroundings. I spotted tamarisk three times.

The remaining days were focused on cleaning up the Chris Wicht camp. The area was used for mining in the past. Then in the early 1900's, a dutch man named Chris Wicht made a pretty nice home in the canyon. He entertained many and had a pool for swimming which was a pretty big deal in the desert. The land was passed down through family. Last year an accidental fire burned up the camp and all the junk there.

This gives you an idea of what the camp looks like. There were eight or more busted up vehicles on the property.


Our job was to lead a group of volunteers in a one day cleanup. There was an interesting mix of OHV users who want the canyon open for OHV use and more environmentally minded people who want to keep it closed to vehicles. Everyone got along well and lots was accomplished. We filled two giant dumpsters with metal and had lots of metal and trash remaining.

Before and after pics of one of the many junk laden areas

Tomorrow we start preparations for our next hitch. I believe we'll be doing trail work southwest of our location for hitch 1.

Wildcorps Training

October 9th my crew started training. It took place in the wilderness of the Mojave National Preserve. Our camp was very remote. The closest hospital was a two hour drive away. The picture below gives you an idea of the remoteness.

Camp from afar looking southwest


The facilities consisted of a covered picnic area, a water well and two pit toilets. Because water is scarce in the desert, there was no water for bathing. I washed my face once but that was it for 10 days.

Looking east


Being so far from civilization had its advantages too. I've never seen so many stars at night as I did there. An advantage of little rainfall is being able to sleep out under the stars nine nights in a row without much worry. To be safe we had tents to store our gear and hide in if rain did fall.

No rain didn't mean no clouds though and camping in a valley meant sunrise came late and sunset came early. Consequently we never missed one.

Sunrise looking southeast


Sunset looking west.


Our training consisted of community building, Leave No Trace ethics, tool safety/sharpening, desert restoration and a four day Wilderness Advanced First Aid (WAFA) course. Desert restoration in a broad sense is camouflaging illegal roads created by OHVers (Off Highway Vehicles) so that nature has a chance to be restored over time.

There are many techniques used and it is as much an art form as it is manual labor. One of the major limitations is not being able to plant live vegetation. The chance of survival of a transplanted piece of vegetation in the desert ecosystem is slim.

Some areas are easier to disguise than others. The pictures below show what one of our groups did during training. Obviously it still looks like a road, but hopefully it looks less obvious and appealing. Rocks and vegetation provide shade that promote growth of new plants.

Restoration Before Pic


Restoration After Pic


I should mention that my crew of five differs from the other four crews that were at training. They will specialize in desert restoration for the duration of the eight months. My crew will be performing desert restoration on one or maybe two hitches. The rest of the time we will be doing a grab bag of projects which you can read about in the future.

The WAFA course was pretty cool. The course was a mix between lecture and scenarios. The scenarios were exciting because they used Halloween make up to make it more realist. My favorite was dealing with a patient with a spurting artery in the lower arm. The person had a pump and sprayed out fake blood until we applied pressure and wrapped it.

We also had a night scenario where a camp stove blew up. One person had inhalation burns and died despite our best efforts. The other person didn't speak English and had boiling water burn the top layer of skin off her hands. It was pretty realist.

Meeting the rest of the interns and leaders was cool. Everyone got along great. Besides training we often played hacky sack, speedball (sorta like ultimate frisbee) and frisbee. At nights there was usually music playing going on. Unfortunately we didn't have a fire to huddle around. The mornings and nights were cold and windy; the days warm, but never hot.

After training, we had four days off. Everyone got along so well that close to all the interns came to Yucca Valley and partied at the other crew house in town. My crew mate and I made the long walk home that night and on the way took some pictures of which I made a collage. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I shaved my beard into a handle bar mustache for fun and to go along with my redneck look. I've since shaved it off.

Horsin' around after our crew party (Text in bottom right picture says, "Warning! Do not lean, sit, crawl, or stand on, or deface horse.)


The two days following the party was the Joshua Tree Roots Music Festival which most attended. Many of us got in free for volunteering which was nice since the cost was $40 for one day. My shift was from 10:30am - 1:30am Saturday night, but a wicked sandstorm blew around 8pm so I didn't man my post. It worked out great because the show went on anyway. Despite not being "all about" that kind of music I really enjoyed the free concert. I also received a free t-shirt for volunteering.

Tomorrow we head north for our first real project. I'll tell more about it when I get back.

First Week in California

I've been in Yucca Valley, California now for a week and everything is going great. Everyone in my crew is getting along swimmingly. Four of us live in a house and our crew leader lives in a separate house in Joshua Tree. The house is a normal two bedroom, two full bath house. The only things not normal are no that there are no beds, no tv and no lawn.

I'm fine sleeping on the floor using my camping mattress. It's nice not having a tv around because we all get so much done without one. Instead of a lawn the yard is sand which is cool because I can easily practice tracking anytime. The good news is we have two computers with DSL so when I'm home I can update my blog and check email.


Our backyard is pretty big. A couple days ago we all at dinner on the back porch and watched the birds. It was interesting to see 5 quails walk along the back fence like it was a straight out of a shooting gallery video game.


Having Joshua Trees in our yard is pretty neat too.


Our first five days of work have mostly been prep work for our trips and your standard new job training stuff. One day we drove into Joshua Tree National Park which you can see from the map below is southeast of us.

View Larger Map

There we hiked up Ryan Mountain. It was an easy 3 mile round trip.


Here is my crew at the top of the mountain. (Me, Kevin, Monika, Rosy, Mizuki (bottom right).


Here is my adventurer pose on the very peak of the mountain.


It is nice to finally be surrounded by people who are enthusiastic about nature as I am. We are all here to learn as much as possible. We are bonding well so far. We already run, do yoga, prepare meals, eat, read and goof around together and it's only been one week.

Tomorrow we leave and travel north to the Mojave National Preserve to do training with the other SCA desert crews. We will be learning wilderness first aid and other skills we'll need to do our job. We'll be in the desert with no showers for 10 days. Hopefully I'll have something to share when we get back.