Hello all, again from Bishop! I hiked out from Sixty Lakes Basin yesterday in an impressive (to me) 6 hours and 10 minutes - ten minutes shy of my goal time for hiking in/out this season! I was very pleased. The past two weeks were arguably two of the best of the season in terms of my mental attitude and in terms of the amount of work we got done. Doing daily Bible classes is definitely making a difference in me appreciating and enjoying my job and having an inner peace about life - it is very cool. In terms of work, we had a few cloud free days, which was an excellent motivator in cleaning gill nets, electrofishing, doing frog surveys, and mending nets in preparation for our demobilization of Sixty Lakes in the next two weeks. I was very happy with what we were able to get done and feel like we are in good shape to demobilize the site in good time this coming hitch.
Hi-lights from this past hitch include:
A birthday party at the Rae Lakes Cabin for the Rae Lakes Ranger, Dario (a proud and good looking 67!). The trail crew hosted, with homemade pizzas, beverages, and apple pie (brought in by the packer). It was very cool, and very fun to hang out with some of my favorite people for another backcountry party.
Two days later Christi and I hiked back over to Rae Lakes, this time to the trail crew camp, where we were treated with taco night - homemade guacamole, cheese, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers - yum! The trailhead ranger from Bishop, Myrth, was also in the area, so she was there too. It was open mic night, and several trail crew members brought out their guitars and played and sang. I treated everyone to the llama poem, still memorized after first learning it in middle school. The llama poem is always a hit. :) That night one of the trail crew members, Myrth, and I stayed up talking around the fire until 12:30am - it was really cool.
Work-wise I couldn't be happier. We had time to clean the nets in all our lakes as much as I had hoped, and we also electrofished our stretches as much as I had hoped. As far as we know 7 of our 8 stream stretches are cleared of adult fish (though two still have fry, and one has a 0-10cm fish in it), and the 8th stretch has a large adult fish (20-30 cm long) that has eluded us all season. I am determined to get this fish, and fervently hope to zap the bugger this coming hitch once and for all. We also had time to do three last frog surveys. In rainy spells we organized camp, getting our twine and p-cord mess into order, organizing the last bit of data in the data books, redrawing the lake maps (with gill net locations) for next season, and writing down tips to help out next year's Sixty Lake's crew. I am pretty pleased with how this past hitch went.
I had time in the last two weeks to do some proper drawing and illustration. My favorite things to draw out here are the flowers, and I think my sketches came out really well (see the pictures from this hitch). I really enjoy having time and desire to do art again, and thanks to my sister earlier this summer (!!) I have art supplies out here in really nice cases. :)
The only other "hi-light" was that this past hitch I met two people (one on my hike back to Sixty Lakes, and another with Christi while e-fishing) who were against the project. The first person - a man and his 20-something son - was aggressively, angerly against the project and my encounter with him really shook me up - I am thinking about doing another post about that; perhaps tomorrow.
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