Cigar in hand: Lake Augusta

Lake Augusta

My last trip was to lake Augusta, and was supposed to be for 10 days but we cut it short due to the fact that we are awesome! (got our work done faster than anticipated) The purpose of this trip was to work on erosion control around the lake area from sheep grazing a long time ago. What happens is the area that has been overgrazed starts to erode and cause a shelf-like pattern to appear on the landscape. The way we fix this is to dig underneath the shelf and drop it down to make a more gradual slope that wont erode nearly as bad. The hike in was pretty brutal (8 miles, most of it going up and up and up....)

This is what the the erosion problems looked like before we got to them

This is after we evened out the slope

This trip started off rough to begin with. We were being packed in by mules because of all of the equipment and supplies needed for this particular job, and we were rushed to get all of our food together for 10 days for 5 people so the mules could carry it in, so right off the bat we were having problems trying to get everything done in time since we were supposed to have a few extra days to get this stuff prepped. The morning we were leaving, we were told that no one was coming back to get all of our tools/trash/extra supplies, ug. This normally wouldnt have been a problem but due to the fact that we were told someone would be coming back in with mules to carry stuff out, we didnt pack light enough to have extra room to carry out all of our stuff. We figured it out, but all ended up carrying an extra 20 or so lbs in our packs and a few tools each (shovels, polaskis, loppers....).

The worst thing about this trip was the mosquitos. Pretty much the entire time out there from 6am till 10pm the mosquitos were out in thick clouds that basically made you want to scream all the time. If you waved your hand in front of your face you would probably hit 30 of them. There was a constant hum in the air all of the time that seemed to melt our brains a little bit, and i ended up wearing a bug net in the mornings just to keep my sanity before we started working.

The worst thing that happened was the day before we were hiking out. It was about 5pm and i was just getting finished with work, and bent down to tie up my boots when i completely collapsed. My back decided it wasnt going to work anymore for the rest of the day, so i had to crawl to my tent and lay flat on my back until about 6 the next morning because i couldnt really move at all. I was still very sore in the morning, but able to hike out with minimal pain. Luckily our supervisor Rich hiked in the day before to help us carry out some of our tools and supplies so that lightened our packs a little bit.