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[Image Description: Four MCC members wade across a river. In the background, there are hillsides covered in gold from the quaking aspens, and deep green pine trees.]

Patience and Perseverance

A crew member lays on their stomach on the ground. A hat covers their face with sunglasses over where their eyes would be.

Coming off a fast-moving chainsaw hitch, our hitch to Twentymile was already expected to be a big change. Our priority project was adding a layer of crushed rock to a puncheon that was still having some drainage issues. On day 1 after arriving at camp, even before seeing our work site, the mosquitos and flies were out in full force. With day 1 optimism we hoped it would be better. Day 2 had us up, stretch circling in a cloud of bugs, and on our way to find a puncheon that was much bigger than we expected. If you've never made crush before, the biggest realization is that you always need more rocks than you think.

For the next 7 days we carried rocks from further up and down the trail and continuously smashing them. The repetitive steps blended well with constantly swatting at bugs. As the hitch went on we got creative with our solutions: ear pro is great for reducing the buzzing of mosquitos, hats over your face during stretch circle keeps flies out of your eyes, and an extra shirt over your head keeps bugs from going after your forehead. We kept smashing both rocks and bugs and by the end of hitch pulled the dirt over the puncheon. Only time will tell if our patience with a slow hitch fully solved the drainage problem, but we definitely made a difference for now.

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