I signed up for PCTA's Trail Skill College a month ago. This is a 3-day event. The class I was assigned to is not interesting (I requested for something else), so I only participated on Sat and Sun. Friday, it wasn't easy to get out of work for me to catch a ride with Kristine at Gateway at 7pm. I managed to arrive shortly after 7pm, ate a sandwich I made on Thursday. We arrived at Thunder Island in daylight to set up our tents. Only about 20 tents scattered around the island and the RV park.
4/18 Saturday. Was chilly at night (low 40s), but Sunny and warm (high 70s) later on. Breakfast 7-8:30am. When I arrived at 7am, many people were already eating and chatting. Pancake, scrambled egg, ham. Cold stuff for making lunch or breakfast: chopped iceberg, tomato, pico. Mayonnaise, peanut butter, 2 kinds of Smucker jam, sliced turkey, 2 kinds of cheese, white bread, bagel, celery stick, carrot, apple, orange, cookies. Quite a lot of options, but not very healthy: loads of preservatives, sugar and hydrogenated oil (many from Costco). Provided by Backcountry Horsemen. Kristine, who's gluten intolerant, had to bring her own sandwiches.
8:45am, we gather around small flags marked the class title. I'm in Saw basic training class. We were given a printout of class material, went through the safety talk, signed 3 pieces of paper. Separated into 4 groups with 4 instructors. Only around 9:30, we started walking towards our trail (PCT), carrying the tools. Carrying the 7' crosscut saw is not easy. It keeps on sliding off my shoulder, and it bounces. See the photo with Krista. Our teacher, Brian, has never taught this class, nor taken this class before. But he is an experienced sawyer. It turned out to be great. The 4 students (including me) learned from both him and Kim, the overseer of this class, so both from experience and from textbook. Kim is an excellent teacher. I like the study of binding. The logs in both cases split unexpectedly.
6-7pm, dinner is burger or hot dog + chili. Burger and chili had vegetarian option. Quite a few little kids for dinner. At 7, after many thank you's, each organization gave a speech: PCTA, WTA, Mt St Helen Institute, Trail Clubs of Oregon, Backcountry Horsemen. Raffle drawing. Kristine won 3 times! Total raffle sale is $1002.
4/19 Sunday: same schedule. Food is mostly leftover from yesterday, except for boiled egg, which had too many left, that they insisted everyone to take some with. I'm on Drainage. Signed 2 pieces of paper. Ruth is our instructor. She's super nice, but not the best teacher. Her direction to trailhead is confusing, and she is too soft to correct our mistakes. She brought browny that she made, made sure everyone is drinking water (it gets quite hot), distributed handouts and DIPloma at the end. However I learned more from fellow students (either their experience or their mistakes). Some of the participants probably know more about drain dip than the class is going to teach. Some newbies are too enthusiastic, making unnecessary and inadequate earth movement. After lunch, I assisted Jack, a caretaker of PCT (south of I-90), in one drain, learned some of his thoughts. Then I made one all by myself.
Around 2pm, Ruth told me that Gale is going to Upper Latourell Falls, about a mile up, and if I'd be interested to go. Of course! I soon passed Gale who was lugging her tools with her. This is not a very pretty trail. The waterfall itself is nice, with 2 tiers, and you can almost go behind it. On my way down, I passed Gale again, and 5 minutes later, passed 6 other team-mates. I picked up my tools and told Ruth and Gabe (the only 2 who didn't hike up) that I'd wait at the park. I waited for about an hour! As Gabe and I cleaned the tools and loaded them to Ruth's truck, the rest kept on yapping nonstop. Poor Kristine waited for me back in Cascade Locks for over 1.5 hours to take me back to Gateway. With Max disturbance that evening, I didn't get home until almost 8pm.
Mosquitos are out.
Seems all these group events, people are so eager to network. Are they lonely? They chat nonstop, like long lost friends. They all ask me what I do. I really don't understand why does that have anything to do with what we are working on there.
