Spike 5: What the hell.

Klamath River, CA
Elevation: 4,090ft.

Spike 5 was by far the hardest spike we have had. It gave me a lot of time and opportunities to think about the work I was doing, the field I was trying to make a place for myself in and the value of perspective. Let me explain. The spike itself was the hardest because the fires we were assigned were fires from grid codes 11 and 12. The first number is time since fire within a 5 year bin and the second is how wet it is, 1 being very wet and 4 being very dry. Our fires were from 1987 and were extremely wet. We weren’t sure what this meant since we had never worked on fires within this grid code but 4 spikes in we weren’t taking any chances. From the very first morning at the cabins I could tell everyone was moving a little slower and was packing a few more niceties for the next 8 days. 

Hitting the road I felt this weight about the cab. A weight really about everyone. It was our 5th spike making it the 49th time we would be driving, hiking and processing a plot. 49 times of anything with little to no change each time could mess anyone up and wouldn’t have to be as taxing to the body, health and moral as this job has been. The weight just didn’t seem to go away. Following Alan’s instructions we navigated forest service roads skirting ridges and climbing mountains. By now the view was normal and didn’t phase us much. Honestly all of our eyes were trained on the road desperately praying that it would hold up beyond a few boulders and navigable washouts. 

Warmed up we pulled off to the side of the road near our first plot. The first part of our assignment was to do 5 plots within the Specimen Fire. The instructions simply told us to park and climb.

Because it was Day 1 we spent a good amount of time refueling, making contact with the local rangers, driving, figuring out Alan Akbar’s scripture - the usual - but what that meant was that our first plot would be in the dead heat of the day and would usually set us up for a late night. Climbing up my thoughts began to run. I thought about my knees, the blown out stitching on the side of my boot, the poison oak on my arms and legs and the potential for tanoak to be in the plot. I’ve never worked a job that seemed to present so many health risks and yet demand so much data. It just seemed, at times, absurd. Turning my ankle ever so often on the loose rocks and crawling up and through swathes of poison oak I just thought to myself, shit, at least I am getting all the bang for my buck. This job is the bootcamp I have been looking for to get me ready to tackle the many jobs to come. Once we got to the polygon we began to notice heavy signs of management. Since it was such an old fire there weren’t many records of salvage logging and it was all fair game. As a rule we were to avoid any plots with heavy/obvious management since it would affect the data. So we u-turned and hiked down. 

Driving down the road a bit more we reached the end, which, in Alan Akbar’s scripture, was to be our dispersal campsite for the next few days. Getting out of the truck our stomach’s all sank so fast in unison you could almost hear it. Before us was nothing but a huge patch of exposed gravel and dusty dirt covered in sharp grass and burs. A few trees lined the edge and dominating the edge opposite the road was a large rock pile. As we walked to the edge our stomachs bottomed out. We were surrounded by a steep ravine and nearly all of our plots were a kilometer hike down and up onto the opposite surrounding ridges. (You can see the campsite and what I’m talking about my following the road till it ends in the previous picture. Our plots where on the ridges behind the cul-de-sac).

“This is absurd…This is crazy…”

Setting up our tents and a shelter we gathered in the shade and tarried until it was time for dinner. Many read, I chose to stand drinking a warm beer eating meat sticks and sweating my ass off. Kim was a champion and rose to the task of digging us out a latrine. She not only dug a majestic hole facing a beautiful view of the surrounding mountains but she also dug stairs into the side of the ridge for us. We all took a field trip to see it.

The next morning we split into teams of 3 and descended the mountain. Pulling on my gloves, picking up the the metal measuring pole and strapping my dreads to the side of my backpack (yea I do that) I felt like a warrior descending his stronghold into the valley below to execute a covert assassination on the enemy camps below. A few minutes into the descent we realized there was nothing but sheer drops surrounding us. Frustrated, confused and feeling helpless we stood in silence gripping the crumbling edges of the exposed rock. 

“This is absurd.”

Skirting the ridge back towards our camp we switchbacked down. Reaching the creek took a long time and strained my ankles so much they gave out a number of times. The slope of the ridge was so extreme standing still caused the dirt below us to crumble. As we began our ascent I already knew this was going to be the worst spike yet. I know I’ve complained about the job a lot and I know that just a few months ago I was completely amped to be out in the mountains of the PNW but something about just being spread so thin and being demanded so much really has worn me out. Talking to the crew I’m hearing similar feedback and so I know it’s not me being crazy, or this being my first big rodeo. On our way up we passed an old camp filled with glass jars, old tins, mining tools and, most eerily, two double bed frames. 

The longer I stood there, sweating, my curiosity for how all of these things got here quickly turned to why did they all just leave everything? Were they just littering because it was the good ol’ days or were they chased out? Either way I didn’t like the juju and kept hiking. 

Here’s a view of the campsite from our plot. (The ridge behind the tree).

The next morning I couldn’t put weight on my ankles. Walking to take my morning shit I could barely make it down the dirt road, I was worried. Coincidentally it was Lily and I’s birthdays! Out of pure coincidence we both were born on July 17th, she was turning 22 and I was turning 25. Pulling out my snowpeak pot I cooked up some raman and eggs and threw in some vegetarian breakfast sausage (courtesy of Lily) and treated myself. 

Taking it slow and carefully we hiked down to our second plot. This plot was full of Doug Fir and collecting 30 stems for Alan Akbar’s stem analysis would be no problem. Possibly my least favorite part of the protocol is the stem analysis. You hike to the plot in the burning heat and carry out 8 protocols and then you have to find and cut down 30 Doug Firs proportional to the sizes you recorded in the plot (so a range from bike handle diameter to of your thigh) and then either saw them up into cookies there or hike with them all out. It just seems crazy. Granted I understand that the high number of samples are necessary for the modeling but damn it they have us in teams of 3! Plus we are doing this essentially every damn plot (some have too few Doug Fir) so that’s about 50 times before this job is over. For the most part we have started to cut the larger trees into 50cm segments, throwing those into our packs and then carrying the smaller trees up by hand. 

“Fuck.”

Packing our things in the truck we headed out of the Specimen Fire. The mission was to refuel and resupply in Etna and then to continue south for the Hotelling Fires. Starting up the engines we pulled away from our dusty stronghold. Looking back at the distant ridges I held up my middle finger and gently scanned it across the glow of the setting sun. The Ray’s in Etna has become our best friend. Oddly filled with other dirty, bewildered, tired young people I realized we were in a major PCTtown. Hungrily and quickly fading I wandered around the store’s aisles. How strange it was to be standing on tile. Just this morning I was sweating and clutching onto dear life to the edge of a rock begging my ankle to keep supporting me and here I was surrounded by cereal boxes. The lights were almost blindingly bright. I remembered it was my birthday and I bought myself a nicely sized tomato. Noticing how confused the clerk was I just looked at him and pulled out my credit card.

“Sometimes you just want a tomato.”

Walking out into the cool night I helped load up the coolers with ice. Then the crew did possibly the sweetest thing anyone has done for me in a long while and walked Lily and I across the street to the library handicap parking, sat us down, presented us with a small chocolate cake and a tub of ice cream and proceeded to sing us happy birthday! I have to admit I was so happy and grateful I almost teared up. We ate the cookie dough ice cream and cake like it was food. 

The next morning was rough. We didn’t get to a decently close campsite until 2300 hours or so and the neighbors woke up at 0500 “dropping” pots and laughing and revving their engines before pulling out. It was most likely pay back for how loud we were setting up shop the night before. We all ate breakfast ravenously since the cake and ice cream ended up being our dinner. Luckily we filled up are water jugs in a local park the night before so nearly everyone had a variation of ramen and we all filled up our water supplies for the field. Revving our engines we made our way west towards the Hotelling Fires. 

We decided to tackle the first plot as a 6 person team due to time constraints. Considering how each of the crew members had the knowledge and strength to do each of the protocols as a 3 man crew the capacity of a 6 man crew was not unlike marching into a UNSC mission with 5 other Spartans next to you. Hiking down into the fire I was surprised by the amount of leaves on the ground. The wetness in the air, the loose rocks on the ground and the colorful deciduous leaves everywhere reminded me so much of home. Sometimes I forget that I am in California. I started to become homesick for my family in NoVa and my family at SCBI.

That night we camped and ate like kings. Eleanor whipped up pasta and brussel sprouts served with squeezed lemons and chilled white wine. Jesus Fuck. 

The next day we split up and tackled two plots. My team’s was at the bottom of a landslide. Classic Akbar. It was an old site so it was grown up quite a bit. The whole plot was basically Madrone which, if you’ve ever hiked through a Madrone forest, a forest of sharp exposed nails. Tearing up our clothes and skin it made little work of our moral. Drained of sweat and blood we powered through the protocol. Just before entering the plot I looked up into the morning sky and saw the sun perfectly hidden behind a huge dead Doug Fir, it pleased me.

That night the other crew surprised us with more pasta, chilled beer and birthday pudding pie!

The next day we boosted moral with another double up and tackled the last Hotelling Fire as a 6 man super team. 

Gunning it for the St. Claire Fire we stopped in Mathew’s Creek campground for water and a much longed for bath in the Salmon River. Clean and revived I chugged as much water as I could at the camp’s spigot, hung my gear to dry and climbed into the truck. With thunder in the distance and  a a few rain drops earlier in the plot, I had high hope that this last arm of our spike would be cooler. 

Driving eastward we passed through wet forests and beautiful views and came across a small town with the prettiest community center complete with a lavish bar, honor code vending machine and a stand up piano. 

14% battery left. The St. Claire Fires proved to be pleasant, albeit long. The choices were a short hike to a site that will definitely have stem analysis or a long hike down and up a ravine to one that didn’t. My team chose the one without stem analysis. The next morning we re-read Alan Akbar’s scripture and it turned out to be a classic Alan situation. His ultimatums are hardly a compromise but rather two types of hard. IF we didn’t do stem analysis in a plot THEN we would instead have to core a large tree in each subplot (9) and then cut down 3 additional ones in the subplot and take the bottom cookie (27). So we had to find and cut down 27 trees anyways. It just didn’t make sense. If you can’t find enough trees in a subplot to do collect 30 trees for stem analysis then just core and cut down 36 trees. What the hell. 

7%. All in all the spike came to a peaceful end. I ran into 2 rattlers on the way out of my last plot and peed a little. I cooked curry and everyone loved it. We resupplied in Etna and Yreka and made it to the cabin with time to spare. Doing stem analysis and inventory we loaded up poor Matt’s car with stems and papers to deliver to Corvallis. This break the mission is San Francisco and I am going to relish in being in a city with a high of 76 and to hell with you Klamath and I love and miss you all and call and text me cause signal will be a plenty!

Chris

Redwood National Park, 2nd Spike and learning to roll with the punches.

Portland, OR
Elevation: 1,073 ft.

First and foremost, I am alive. I have made it through the second spike of our field season and I must say that things are picking up in pace, difficulty, risk and temperature. But more on that all later, first a flashback to my last 6 days off…

We started the day early in anticipation of the drive. The destination was the coastal town of Arcata, CA and instead of the southwesterly winding road of highway 96 we thought it would be safer and quicker to take I-5 to the east southwards and then to cut across on highway 299 effectively making a box around northern California and our study site. The roundabout path granted us the chance to hit Yreka, Weed, Redding, Whiskeytown and Weaverville; towns we would not have likely ever visited. It also skirted us around Mt. Shasta which was a beautiful sight to drive towards. Snow-capped mountains have become a favorite sight of mine. 

From Klamath River to Arcata the temperature dropped at least 20 degrees causing us to quickly throw on layers before catching lunch at a quaint little Pho place. It’s the mild, misty summers of the coast that has convinced me that my future nest will be in a maritime town. I love the sun and the water and the fact that you can have an excuse to throw on a fleece most months of the year. After the late lunch we loaded up on camp foods at the local organic market, grabbed a few beers at a local brewhouse and gunned it for Gold Bluffs Beach. The next morning was cold and misty. We took our coffee and tea on a large piece of driftwood facing the chilly and endless Pacific. Our plan was to get to the Kuchel Visitor Center for maps and information and then to start our backpacking trip at the southern tip of the park. 

We parked Rhyhorn at the Redwood Creek Trailhead and hiked into the woods. The plan was to skirt the creek southward and to find a backcountry campsite along the gravel bars close to Tall Trees Grove 8 or so miles in. Along the way we passed an amazing variety of flora I had never seen. Endless ferns and towering Redwoods dominate the landscape of the small fog belt we hiked along. It is the uniqueness of this part of the California coast combined with the endemism of the Coastal Redwood that catalyzed the creation of the Redwood National and State Parks. To hike among these giants is to walk in a land successfully and gratefully preserved. The greatest thing about backcountry hiking is coming across random acts of humankind. Or rather, humanhumor.

There are, of course, trials to being so removed, or rather, to being so dependent on common human conventions and comforts that can push you out of your comfort zone. An intact bridge over a narrow drainage way for example.

Pushing onward we finally made camp a little past the Tall Trees Grove on a gravel bar at the junction of Tom McDonald Creek and Redwood Creek. There we set up camp, read, filtered water, ate and slept. The mild trail and the cool creek were welcome comforts compared to the harsh, rugged mountains of our field site and we slept like kings. The next morning we were welcomed by the sounds of birds and the drifting, coastal fog. 

The hike out was much quicker than the hike in. There was little else to see but stopping to bid farewell to trees we had passed on the way in. Once we got to Rhyhorn we resupplied on food, water and clean clothes and, bidding farewell to the trail, gunned it for Fern Canyon.

I will admit much of the motivation to backtrack to Fern Canyon was because of it’s role as a film location for Jurassic Park II. The unique canyon was right off the coast and held enough moisture to be home to countless Five-Fingered Fern. Hiking through its cold waters and staring up the walls and logs immersed me in such a primeval aura that I half expected a Velociraptor to come tearing around the corner. 

In an attempt to place ourselves more northward by the end of the day we hit the road after Fern Canyon and didn’t stop until we reached Crescent City. We didn’t expect the town to be so…tourist dependent as it was. Having just been in Fern Canyon we were surprised and uncomfortable being in the rundown, beach town. Small hotels and motels lined the main street and industrial buildings and dilapidated houses filled the rest of the space. The goal was to get information from the park headquarters located there but it was closed and instead we opted to have dinner at the local Thai restaurant. Though the owners were extremely kind and accommodating, what I had was less Drunken Noodle and more cheaply stir fried, day-old noodles with random leftover vegetables and too much spice thrown into it. Heading back down the coast we aimed for the Nickel Creek campground. It was ideal because it was along the coast and was an easy 1.5 mile hike from the parking lot, the caveat was that it was a parking lot notorious for being broken into - what can you do? We stopped at an overlook for some cell phone signal to call loved ones and to watch the sun set.

The next morning we walked along the beach and bid the Pacific farewell. The rest of the trip was going to be inland traveling northwards into Oregon. The mission was to get to Cave Junction by that night putting us in a good position for our rendezvous with the Medford Interagency Communication Center’s radio technician the next morning. We needed him to reprogram our Oregon-issued Forest Service radios to better work with the californian repeaters of the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains we were working in. Along the way we stopped by pull-off in the Humbolt-Toiyabe National Forest to do a rainy last hike among the great Redwoods while Lilly got a much needed trail run in (runners, you know). It is truly amazing and humbling to have so many great trees made so accessible by roads and byways. It is amazing and frightening to me knowing that these giants were almost logged to the point of no return and has made me so grateful for all of the hard work conservationists have been doing these long years and years to come to save all endangered members of our world, charismatic or not. I knew in my gut that I was fighting a good fight that may, on the surface, seem hopeful and without reward but that there existed success stories like this and that no one can ever expect a success story if no one is fighting. 

Radios reprogrammed and returned we stinkily and starvingly hit up Medford REI for supplies and Food 4 Less for food and beer for the next work spike. Piling everything into Rhyhorn for the last time we made our way south back to our cabins and to our warm beds. It would be only the third night I’ve spent in a bed since May 21st. 

Now, back to the second spike. First off I have to apologize for this being such a long post, I haven’t had much signal or wifi access as of late and when those are within reach I haven’t had much energy for anything other than reading and sleeping. I have begun to find the glow of a screen tiring and painful and the endless world of smartphone apps (even instagram) to be overwhelming and stressful. Perhaps good changes? Anyways, back to the post.

The second spike of the field season was difficult for me for many reasons. First off we were now on our own. Rob and Alan from Smithsonian and OSU respectively had returned to their usual lives and it was now my teammates and I in charge of the field season. No longer did we have guides or supervisors to turn to when we had questions or to rely on for decision making. With Kristine gone from the team the leadership position fell to me and, not having lead a team formally before I was beginning to panic at the amount of detail that I no longer could let slip off my shoulders. It was a godsend and a grateful blessing that my team turned out to be understanding, supportive and extremely independent. Quickly we turned the decision making to the whole group and became a sort of consensus-based self-governing field crew. The great Klamath Field Crew of 2015 haha. Having received GPS and map coordinates from Alan we packed the trucks with supplies, food and maps and hit the road for the first assigned site of the spike. The destination was the 2002 Stanza Fire.

Ascending up the mountain the roads began to narrow and become unkept. Many places were blocked by downed trees and rocks and some parts had been burned away completely. Using the map and GPS we navigated the turns best we could. The goal was to get us as close as we could to the assigned polygon and to still be near a safe turnaround point, campsite and approach angle. Inevitably we took a wrong road and found ourselves making the scariest 20 point u-turn of our (my) life. With the whole team spotting me I nervously maneuvered the massive work truck against the edge of the drop off. After all was said and done I took my hat off, uttered “Fuck” and took a long piss off the mountain side. 

Once in the polygon we worked quickly to set up the plot running 50m and 30m tapes to form a large rectangle transected into 9 subplots. We set off on working through the protocols knowing that there wasn’t much room for questions and that we were in charge of the quality of the data now. The pressure of this being the only field season afforded by the grant for the study made it all the more imperative that we got this right. Then the thunder came. Being out here in fire country we needed to treat lightning seriously. Having come from the east coast where thunder and lightning roll in from the skies along with heavy rains I had no concept of “dry lightning”. Here in the dry mountains of the west lightning can come suddenly and numerously and without rain starting fires everywhere it lands. As the skies continued to boom the radio chatter began to increase. Lookout planes were being sent to survey the mountain sides and people were reporting their locations. We decided to call it off until tomorrow and made camp at a pull-off along the road. Parking the truck between the road and our circled tents we set off on taking an inventory of the supplies, reading and cooking dinner. The cold winds whipped at us atop that ridge so that we were in long-sleeves before long. 

As the sun set over the distant ridges we gathered close and sipped our beers and ate our warm lentils discussing books, past jobs and the anticipated trials of the rest of the spike. I have never worked in such beautiful and yet rugged mountains and gazing over at the burning sunset I knew that I was in a good place with good people.

The next day we finished the Stanza plot and quickly headed for the next location on our list and promptly finished that one as well. The mission then was to find the Norcross Campground, send two people and the truck back to Happy Camp to rendezvous with our new teammate Charles and to set up camp and dinner. But first I needed to cross this stream. 

If there is one thing to know about me it is that I like to be prepared. Prepared for a test, prepared for a job, hell, prepared for a vacation. I simply need to be prepared. I am ok with doing most any job no matter how unpleasant as long as I know ahead of time what I will be dealing with and can prepare accordingly. It’s why I am the most daring and clumsy when it comes to bushwacking. Trampling blindly I crush through brush, thorns and snags to take the shortest path but I do it with two pairs of socks, thick Carhartt jeans, knee high gaiters, long-sleeves, strong boots, leather gloves, a kool-tie around my neck, a buff around that and over my nose and mouth, a wool buff over my head and hair and a sun hat atop all of that. But no Chacos. That is why all the rest of the day and it’s responsibilities could wait. I needed to cross this stream. After walking up and down the bank several times the team decided the only way across was to either step carefully and surely on the barely exposed rocks or to walk barefoot across it. As my teammates began taking off their shoes and socks I looked desperately at Alan’s instructions (as I didn’t have a great track record of crossing streams barefoot) and it simply said, “cross the stream to the polygon”. The bastard. I took off my boots and gaiters and socks and rolled my thick Carhartts as high as I could. I secured the radio in my pack and began to cross. I rationalized that the worst case scenario would be that I slipped and broke my ankle and then drowned, so as long as I was able to get away without any of that happening I could really see the whole thing as a success. Stabilizing my first step I could already feel the weight of my swinging boots and heavy pack shifting me around. Holding my breath I lifted my other foot and gingerly stepped onto the next slippery, freezing rock. 

As it would turn out Norcross Campground was an exceptional and beautiful campground, likely due to the fact that the fire we were studying had destroyed it and it had been rebuilt. Mainly meant for horseman, it had a few large corals, wide open camp grounds and access to the nearby creek. Since our sites for the rest of the spike were in fires within driving and hiking distance from the campsite we decided to make it our home base for the next 8 days. 

As the week progressed the temperature began to rise. Quickly I was realizing that I couldn’t keep up my usual field uniform and would need to start making compromises between being clean and not getting heat stroke. The slopes and vegetation also began to worsen pushing many of us to our limits by the end of the 10 hour days. The girls had the right idea to take advantage of the frequent stream crossings and decided to hike the second half of the return trip a la undies. 

One of the perks of working in old fires are the views. We work surrounded by old snags many of which could kill us, but are absolutely beautiful. The sheer size of some of the pre-burn trees are astonishing. 

For the most part we were out of the field and back at camp by 4-5pm each day. A pattern began to form where we would start our days 0600 hours to beat the heat, get our plots done as fast as possible and return to camp to process trees collected for stem analysis whilst imbibing hot beer until dinner time. Because of our proximity to Elk Creek we also had the luxury of bathing each night this spike. Another thing about me is that I absolutely need to be clean. Working in the field and hiking and camping for 8 days on end I have started to develop techniques to beating the stink. Moslty baby wipes and Dr. Bronners to be honest. 

Each night was spent with good conversation, good food and good company. To think that we were being paid to work and live out here blew all of our minds. It seemed we all knew exactly how lucky and privileged we were to be chosen for the team and, even on the hardest days, we all agreed with the age old wildlife saying, “A bad day in the field is still better than a good day in the office”! 

Here’s to an amazing team and an amazing summer to come. I have already grown and learned so much from the land and the people I have come to call my home and friends. My perspectives on life is ever changing and my path is ever growing but like I said before, I know I am in a good place with good people. Until next spike and next time.

Chris