March Elective Training

Elective training, perhaps every corps members favorite week of the year! The entire WCC meets up at Fort Worden here in Port Townsend for a week of good times and learning. Mitch took Wilderness First Responder, Zach - Wetlands, Evan - Wilderness survival, Rick and Colin both took the wildlands firefighting course. All of us had a great time learning skill that will be beneficial to our future careers. I can only tell you guys about my training, WFR, but maybe we will get the other guys to talk about theirs in another post.
During WFR training we participated in some intense first aid situations. We learned the basics of splinting, wound management and general first aid. I had a great time! The week culminated in a 1 hour mass casualty incident scenario. As my group walked up to our patient we could tell she had a broken leg, but once we got close enough we saw that she also had an arterial bleed (with gushing blood and everything!)! Even though everything was fake, it was hard to not get caught up in the moment and get tunnel vision and feel the adrenalin pumping. We got so sidetracked that one of our patients walked off and we had some trouble finding him, Oops. Because the WFR certification is an 80 hour cert. I will going back in June to finish it up. I'm looking forward to the next training!

a femur traction splint I made

the highlight of training was the mustache I shaved into Cody's head!

Evan starting a fire in his wilderness survival course

Tarboo Bay Beach Clean Up

In early February we met up with Deborah from DNR to do a beach cleanup at Tarboo Bay, near Quilcene. The crew was definitely anticipating a break from planting, and working on a beach all day seemed like awesome. As we walked down to the beach and received an orientation to the site and project we realized this wouldn't be such an easy job. The wind was blowing, there were logs strewn every where and the beach was trashed! We grabbed some trash bags and began combing the beach. We picked up thousands upon thousands of plastic bottles, foam floats, wood, a lot of stuff! There were a few items we were supposed to look out for: muscle disks and aquaculture bags. We later found out that for every 50 muscle disks we turned in we would get a 5 pound bag of muscles. We set out diligently to find every muscle disk we could. Along the way we found a few odd bits of trash: old school leather shoes, some cool little trinkets that we kept, tennis balls, racquet ball balls, you name it, we probably found one of them. We began a little competition for grossest, coolest and most valuable find. Unfortunately I can't remember who won what, but in the end every one walked away with enough muscle disks to cash in for 10 pounds of muscles.

did I mention we got to ride these cool barges?

Planting, planting and more planting

Planting, the most important thing we do, but by the end, the crews least favorite thing to do. That may be a generalization, but by the time planting season was over I was beyond happy to not have to plant any more trees! Our schedule got a little screwed up because of our trip to New York for Sandy Relief. We didn't start planting until the end of January. Our first few sites were tucked away on the Big Quilcene River, mostly under plantings in easy to dig soil. We had to plant a lot of potted stock, especially when planting for the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, which adds an extra bit of work in depotting the plants. Planting did, however provide an opportunity for us to talk while working. We were no longer using brush cutters and DR mowers so there was no need for ear plugs. We would play a few verbal games to help the time go by faster.
February was dedicated to our biggest planting site of the year, Donovan Creek. We filled in some plants at Lower Donovan Creek for a week. During that week we really got into the swing of things. We even managed to talk Jason into bringing us some augers to help increase production! With those augers we were tree planting machines! Once we finished planting lower Donovan creek we moved on to Upper Donovan Creek and planted both sides of the creek that week. Unfortunately we forgot to save some plants for one corner of the site and had to dig up some of the conifers we planted. Regardless, we had both banks planted and ready for tubing.

best stay away!

liking the rain

auger, best tool ever

After Donovan Creek we had a few plantings here and there that were small CREP sites or properties next to important watersheds. We did some underplanting for Hood Canal along the Big Quil and replaced some dead trees at snow creek and some filler plantings with Deborah for DNR.
There were 2 other major planting sites on our calendar: Rivers End with Jamestown Sklallam Tribe and Morse Creek for NOSC. The Rivers End planting was prepped by us in the beginning of the year. We had scalped the sod and their field guys had sprayed those holes. With the two augers running full time we managed to get that entire site planted in 1 day, tubed the next day and spent the next couple days filling in dead trees.

Morse Creek was on of those never ending projects. It began as an underplanting/fill in planting of about 500 plants and turned into a few thousand (okay, maybe only 1500). Regardless, the digging was not easy (it was super rocky) and there was a lot of rain. Part of what made this project unending is plants kept showing up at this site that weren't on the planting list. It was confusing and annoying, but we just kept planting. We finally finished planting and tubing this site a few days ago.

MLK week

Every year AmeriCorps puts on a Martin Luther King Jr week of service. It's a week that all AmeriCorps members must plan a community service project. We decided to do our project with The Adventuress, an educational schooner from the Puget Sounds and at Irondale Beach. On Saturday and Sunday we met at the Port Townsend Boat Haven with two crews from Port Angeles and helped get the boat in sailing shape. We did everything from take apart pulleys to scraping bottom paint to treating ropes. It was a fun experience, and being able to work with the two other crews from Port Angeles was fun. On Monday we met at Irondale beach to prep the site for volunteers. The task was to get together with the volunteers and remove blackberry and ivy from the beach. We did a great job and had a good time working with all sorts of people.

Working hard with the volunteers

free food!

working on The Adventuress

working with volunteers

Building a trail, We are pumped

After a few weeks of site maintenance we were able to catch a break and build a trail for the Jefferson Land Trust. Our crew was pumped about being able to do this. Because we are a restoration crew we don't get many trail building opportunities. On Monday morning we met with Carrie, a corps member IP and from last years crew. The trail was already marked for us, all we had to do was put in the tread (easier said than done). Carrie also wanted us to build a split rail fence to keep cars out of the property. After our safety meeting we set to work building the fence. After we got the hang of it Owen, Evan and Zach went to begin cutting the tread for the trail. Colin and I stayed to finish up the fence. I was having a great time building the fence. The post hole digger and tamping bar were giving my arms a pretty good workout. By the end of the day we had finished the fence and were waiting for the concrete to dry before hanging the gates.
Zach and Evan did a good job putting a rough bench, and cutting tread and were at least halfway to the end of the trail. Come Tuesday we were all working on the trail. Zach and Evan were still roughing it out down to the creek while Colin and I were smoothing and tamping the beginning of the trail. We made good progress that day, but were slowed down due to some trail features that needed to be constructed.
Wednesday and Thursday were all about the finishing touches. We finished the trail all the way to the bottom and began a last round of tamping and leveling. We also had to move a lot of dirt to some of the corners to help decrease the slope and protect some large tree roots. We dug a giant hole in the woods off trail to get this dirt. 20-30 wheelbarrow loads later the trail was finished. We had a few things here and there to do, but it was time to add the finishing touch, and arrow pointing the direction of the trail at the trailhead. We made the arrow out of a tree root that we dug up. It made a perfect end to an awesome week of work.

After a long days work

bring on the dirt, we nee to fill this hole

planting some ferns along the trail

this is were all our dirt came from

our magnificent arrow!

tamping the trail

Tube Removal and Maintenance

Our return from New York came as a huge relief to the crew. We were all exhausted and ready for an actual weekend, and we were going stir crazy from being coped up in that truck for so long! The weeks between December 1st and 20th consisted of site maintenance and tube removal. The low key, low stress work was a welcome change from the work we were doing in New York. The tube removal became especially tedious. We would walk many planting cites looking for trees that were tall enough to have their protective tubes removed. After the first week we were ready to be done with tube removal, unfortunately we still had 2 weeks left! The monotony of that job, coupled with the short days was enough to get on everyones nerves. Fortunately the last week before our Winter Break was spent in Sequim doing some site maintenance. This turned out to be an eventful week. I was bonked in the nose by a tree that spring boarded by the DR mower and we managed to get the truck stuck in the mud. Come Thursday at 5:30 we were definitely ready begin our break.

New York, New York

Our View of Manhattan from our ship

Shortly before Superstorm Sandy made landfall Owen informed us that we are on the list to be shipped over to assist in disaster response. The Next day we received confirmation that we would be leaving on October 31st for a long truck ride east. We were up early, had the truck packed and on our way to Ellensburg to have a meeting with Roland and all the other crews going to New York. Adrenaline was high, and we were stoked to be given such a great opportunity to help in the recovery.

The WCC caravan

We made the 3000 mile trip in 5 days, with stops in Missoula MT, Wall SD, Madison WI, Sharon PA and finally New York. We didn't get our assignment until we reached Madison, and our final confirmation of the assignment came as we all met a final time in New Jersey. We began seeing signs of the disaster once we neared New Jersey. We filled up on gas right before we crossed into New Jersey, as soon as we crossed the border there were signs that the gas stations had no gas.

No Gas Signs

After meeting in New Jersey and getting our assignment to Queens College we drove into the city. There were many areas that were blacked out. While owen was driving I was the navigator. Trying to make our way through the city was insanely stressful, but, we did finally make it to Queens College. Our initial and primary task was shelter operations. It was considered a life sustaining task, and therefore the most important. We ended up running a shelter for 3 weeks. Our crew was responsible for the family and pet shelter operations between the hours of 8am-4pm. After we got of work we would hang around the shelter with the other AmeriCorps groups that were there or head to one of the restaurants for dinner (either this deli or pizza place both were really good!). When we finally got our first day off (14 days or so after leaving) we went to Manhattan and explored the city. I went to the American Museum of Natural History, some of the guys went and walked around the city. It was a great day off! 7 days later we got another day off and went into the city again. We closed the shelter and finally managed to get some real field work in. But, the real treat was moving onto a navy vessel of some kind to live in for the next week. The food was awesome, the bunks tiny, but definitely worth it. Our field work consisted of mold mitigation. After 6 days of that we were called home, and our 3000 mile journey home began.

The navy ship that we stayed in while in New York 

We all really enjoyed the food on the ship

Getting work done for America

Off day in Manhattan

Our sleeping situation in the Shelter.

Our sleeping situation on the ship