2002 Caretaker season logs - Piazza Rock, Maine

I found my old logbook from when I was a caretaker at the Piazza Rock shelter area on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.  What a terrific experience, it really opened my eyes to Leave No Trace as a philosophy, and the overall effect that small impacts have when multiplied by hundreds.  I spoke to hundreds of people that summer, and spent a lot of time on Saddleback mountain as a summit steward, keeping people off the alpine terrain and helping preserve the blueberries and mountain cranberry for the bears.  I count "section" hikers rarely, only if they told me they were section-hiking, else, everyone was a dayhiker.

I've posted the daily hiker counts in my Google Docs, the link is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F7LPAtiOpAIcW-kr8OWH2VubHvHvb14SkHU0xe5Whro/edit?usp=sharing

Gaps exist due to time off.   I was 10 days on, 4 off.
 
As expected, a big surge of northbound thruhikers came in September, racing the closure of Katahdin.  What I had forgotten about, was a strange trickle of SOUTHbound hikers in September as well.

This tells me that if I want to climb Saddleback with minimal traffic, pick some time in early August - for a year which had the same kind of Spring as 2002!   Some years the Mountain is open early, som late.

What's funny are the notes I made, apart from weather observations and trail conditions from my ridgeruns - I had some unkind things to say about a lot of the northbounders I met, and based on my own experiences hiking, I want to say its for 2 reasons: they're very proud of themselves, and assume you know nothing about what they've experienced, and secondly, they've just made it through the Whites and the over-sanitized, restrictive rules of the AMC.   In Maine there's no fees, and the caretakers have a much different role.

My biggest official duties included cleaning graffiti from the summit of Saddleback (yep, really), chasing an ATV rider off the Trail corridor, and getting Colby college in trouble for camping above treeline.

The next time you're at a backcountry site with a privy, or there's a bog bridge, or stone stairs, or a piped spring, give a little thought to the folks who invested their time.   By providing a permanent, convenient place to camp, it focuses the impact on 1 area instead of spreading it out along the entire trail like a strip mall.

Late summer - Let the Canning begin!

The cherry tomatoes are going full speed these days, so I took 4 quarts of them and decided to save them as sauce.   Since I'm the only one eating it, I get to make it how I like.

All fresh from the garden this year, I'm doing:
yellow cherry tomatoes
a few red tomatoes that happened to be ripe

yellow squash
zucchini
red onion
basil
garlic
olive oil

The olive oil is the only thing I couldn't make myself.   Maybe when I finish the grape jelly in a few weeks, I could try making grapeseed oil.... but probably not.

Given that there's non-tomato stuff in the sauce, I figured I'd need to pressure can it, so I skipped the vinegar/lemon juice.

Half the batch, with the pressure cooker warming up in the back.   Electric stoves just don't have the punch that gas ones do.   It took around 20 minutes to go from boiling up to 10psi.

I ended up with quarts of sauce, a little watery since I didn't simmer it down endlessly (not wanting to mush the zucchini).

Growing your own food and canning it is a great way to reduce your Trace - you can use your own composted scraps as soil ammendment, the vegetables don't travel via truck anywhere, you're reusing the canning jars, and come winter you have a healthy sauce (all my stuff is organic) with no extra sugar, thickeners, or crap.

A time to cut, a time to buck, a time to split and a time to stack

The first foggy cool morning of the summer reminded me that it won't last forever, so I've been trying to get the woodpile sorted.   I have about 2 cords set up so far, and another cord in the big pile that's starting to season.  I enjoy cutting and splitting the wood, the smell and feel of it, it's good exercise, and the idea that I'm recycling the carbon that I just exhaled makes me smile.

It's funny how people sell "semi-seasoned" wood - hint: if it's not seasoned, it's green.   The wood guy, nice guy, good price, good wood, delivered a mostly oak cord at about 28% MC inside the splits.  It should at least burn this fall, perhaps not well, but I do get a lot of sun and a strong crosswind.

Here's the small pile, with some big rounds submerged in it that I don't want to think about splitting just yet.

(Yes that's the old outhouse down the hill)

Stacked carelessly around are the bits of wood and fenceposts which help form my tarp system which I'll implement come November.   The composter isn't part of the system, it was just in the way.

Fully loaded and squared, this will be about 4 cords - 4 rows of splits, 4' high and 24' long.
Note that a cord is 128 cubic feet, generally stacked in 3 rows of 16" splits, 4' high and 8' long.  The rows of splits should be stacked with space enough for a squirrel to pass through, but not enough for the cat behind it.   This is mostly maple, with some oak, white pine and white birch mixed in.

The big pile up the hill will be another 5 cords.  If can I can burn 4 cords over the winter, I burn almost no oil, save that what I need for hot water.   I usually burn hard until I have about 1/2 cord left, then depending on the season, put the brakes on, leaving that as my emergency, you-have-no-heat scenario.   I have a genny for the furnace, but it's loud and irritating.

I had some apple that I cut this spring, bucked and stacked but not split.   I tested the ends of the rounds with the moisture meter and got about 9%.   I tested by piercing the bark and got almost 50%.   Splitting one 4" round, the inside was at 30%.   The pieces were so small, I assumed I wouldn't need to split them, but given that, it looks like I'll have to.   You should be at 10-20% MC.   Too dry and the wood burns too fast and hot, too wet (above 20) and it hisses.  Above 25 and you boil sap out the ends!

Apple, glorious, fragrant, high BTU apple - cut from my reclaimed heirloom trees:

Some links which I've found useful:
http://mb-soft.com/juca/print/firewood.html

I'd add my affiliate link to the Amazon page for the moisture meter that I bought, but they wouldn't let me.  A good one shouldn't be more than $30.   Google it.

I love to talk firewood, ask me any questions.

"Wild" movie review

Meh.

First off, it's not a hiking movie.   There's some scenery, and a few legit interactions between the main character and other hikers, and some might-not-have-happened-but-definitely-could-have scary scenes with some hunters, but it's not a hiking movie.

It's a movie about a woman who grew up out of control, in a house that was out of control, and when faced with the death of her mother, fell apart.  Her life degenerates in predictable Hollywood ways, and she has an epiphany about hiking the PCT to somehow make her a better person.  Later declaring herself a feminist, she retroactively empowers herself and justifies her former self-destructive behavior as somehow necessary on a cosmic level.  She doesn't complete the trail, she gets to somewhere in Oregon and is apparently healed.

Chick flick + hipster + some hiking scenes on the PCT.

The main takeaway - Plan Ahead And Prepare.  They made much of her almost-charming lack of planning, skills, or appropriate equipment.  Walk-in-the-Woods-esque.

Edit: Some further thoughts - it's possible that the production of the movie simply fell back on cliches - closeups of heroin bubbling over a flame, dimly lit room with a nipple in profile to prove that the actress was naked, etc.   It's possible that the book wasn't filled with self-indulgent cliches.  But the movie was.
Also, props to the movie for showing her lighting small campfires on a metal plate.   #MinimizeCampfireImpacts

MATC caretakers bring down thousands of pounds of trash

 I met Ian last year while camping at the Horns Pond shelter area.  He single-handedly triggered an avalanche of volunteer work which cleaned up an old Fire Warden's cabin site (of which I played one small part).   Over the years the place had been completely trashed out.

http://www.matc.org/assets/Resolved-Refuse-Removal-ATJourneys-MarApr2014.pdf

The MATC caretakers at Horns Pond in Maine also perform another critical duty - they compost human waste.   At altitude the temperature is too low and the soil is too thin for normal microbial activity to do it, so they backpack (literally) tons of bark chips up the mountain, mix it into giant tubs of waste, and compost it.   Anything non-biodegradable (soda cans, tampons, etc) they pick out and then pack down to town.

Consequences, how do they work?

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - Fifteen hikers from a church group who failed to return from a day hike in the Southern California mountains were exhausted and losing daylight, so they decided to build a fire and wait until Monday morning, when a helicopter plucked them safely out of the wilderness.

The Los Angeles County sheriff's helicopter rescued the hikers - 11 adults and four teens - and they were driven to a nature center to be reunited with anxious family and friends.

...

Last summer, the U.S. Forest Service finally closed off access to the Upper Falls because people were ignoring warning signs and climbing unauthorized, steep, crumbling trails into Angeles National Forest, resulting in rescues and deaths.

http://www.abc27.com/story/27342886/15-hikers-from-california-church-group-found-safe

I hope they got a bill for the helicopter ride.