Bryan Harwood
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- Joined
- Mar 24, 2016
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- 26
Joe, Bryan (me), Shane, and Mike. The USFS Porcupine Trail Crew 2015 Bighorn National Forest.
For those of you who like to hike on nice trails into areas that are amazing, you can thank a trail crew for the blood, sweat, tears, passion, energy, heart, soul, and LIFE that goes into every inch of hiking trail everywhere.
I am one of those people. I have been working trail crews for years now. The season that I am about to share with you is my most recent season on the Bighorn as the Crew Leader for this awesome project.
Thanks to the forest's Recreation Manager, Bob Cochran, this trail project came to life. It is a rare occurrence in the USFS for such a big project to take place anymore. Luckily we had a supervisor that pursued the possibility, and with our help succeeded.
We lived at Porcupine Ranger Station, 6 miles away on the mountain. The living situation was great.
We Built this...
Just to start this long post off with a preface. This is the first section of stone work that we spent the first 8 weeks on the site completing.
I will start off by saying. This job was a lot of hard work, technical knowledge, heavy tool use, and alot of perfectly shaped stone from the talos field that surrounded.
This was the project site... A brand new rock staircase descending into this picturesque waterfall canyon.
This is Porcupine Falls, thus the name Porcupine Trail Crew. We spent 12 long weeks here in the heat, cold, hail, rain, and thunderstorms day in and day out putting rocks in the ground.
The whole crew, even the Bighorn Trail Crew helped out for a day. This was my office for 2015. Not as glamorous as it seems, but Ill take it over a sterile ass flourescent lighted office building.
For the heavy trail work stuff, we use the Rock Drill to help split the massive boulders into pieces that we can use more efficiently.
After we drill several holes, we split the rock with the Feather/wedge technique:
Crew Love. This technique incorporates the use of these single-jack hammers and these titanium wegdges that split the rock in half when pounded in between the feathers.
This is a normal day for me at work...
How do you move such huge rocks???
Well, we use the Griphoist, snatchblocks, and this huge cable to slowly lift the rocks up the slope, where they will be placed in the ground.
Griphoist in full action.
Also some splitting in process
Also, we Use these bastard tools, the Rock Bar for prying bars into place. You see that huge boulder. we can move that with these bars and the use of a fulcrum. There's me in the red hat swinging the double jack hammer. Lots of work is done using that tool.
Work in progress!!
My crew as they shed some gratitude on their boss.
Teamwork!!
First 3 weeks. Proud of our work.
So as the season went along, we began getting alot better at what we were doing, but also, we began running into alot more issues that needed problem solving and frustration. So we began accumulating new tools for the hard spots. This is the ROCK SAW, that is corrct a saw that cuts rock like wood. It has a diamond tipped blade and water must be squirt on the blade at all time to ensure proper cooling of the metal.
In Action, cutting rocks to ensure a good fit. This was my favorite tool, and I rarely let my crew members use it. Sorry guys, I loved running this thing!
More shots of Rock Bar usage and other happenings.
This is our Break room. Perfect spot for lunch and a cool off break.
Views from our hike into work everyday. Not Bad
The hike into work was a rough steep trail that we had to carry all our heavy equipment into from. Every, Single, Day. My knees are mad at me from this season
The complete sections were so beautiful, I loved photographing them
Beginning of our second section. Some nice drains and wall structures here.
Loading the truck for work in the morning...
My girlfriend Erin even visited me from Missoula one weekend
<3And, on our last day, we had a photoshoot of the crew! Cuz thats how I Run my crews.
Our Rig. A nice truck.
Our Waterfall, a nice truck
This Is the Video of the First Section of completed stairs.
This is the second section. Second section of completed Stairs on the Porcupine Falls Trail. This part only took 4 weeks of construction, we ran into some serious bedrock but "there's always something you can do" so we did.
This was a great trail season. This coming year I will be doing similar work in Yellowstone NP. Thanks for reading
-Bryan
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