Our Youth Volunteer Vacation

One week, and ten pairs of hands. It is amazing what we can do!

From July 25th to August 1st 2009, we, Sally Miller and Arian Ensley, participated in a Backcountry Youth Volunteer Trail Crew at the beautiful Hyas Lake. This was our second year working with the Washington Trials Association, and we were extremely excited to experience our first backcountry trip. We knew that our job was to build puncheon, a low bridge, over a few creeks and a muddy area. However, we didn’t know what that all entailed. We soon found out!

The first day we hiked out to our work site in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, reviewed the tools, and got a brief explanation about our job for the next week. On our second day we got right to work demolishing the old bridges in the area. We started our construction of a new 35 ft long bridge that we connected to the puncheon, built the week before by an adult Volunteer Crew.

The Backcountry Youth Volunteer Vacation crew. High school student volunteers are wearing green hardhats.

The demolition was pretty easy, and it only took us about half a day. Then the real work set in. First, we set sills: 8x8 boards perpendicular to the direction of the bridge. This was the most technical and time consuming part because they all had to be perfectly level and in line with all the other sills. We also had to make sure the sills were stable enough for us to “dance” on them, which we did plenty of! Sometimes we had to dig down to place a sill, and once we had to build up about two and a half feet in the middle of a stream for a sill. At times we would get three sills level with each other and then unfortunately realize they were not level with the existing bridge. Consequently, we were always having to starting over and adjust all the sills so they were level. Next we placed the stringers, which ran perpendicular to the sills, and these had to be parallel and straight all the way down.

Finally it was time to nail the decking on. It was great to see all our work finally coming together! It was a very repetitive and tiring job, but we made it fun by turning it into a race. A a short railing was nailed on top to tie together the project. We finished the approach right before lunch on Thursday… a whole day early!

To our great surprise, some people form WTA hiked up to our work site with two goats when we finished and delivered us some absolutely delicious ice cream. We both agreed that the goats were a bigger hit than the ice cream though! It was a great way to end a day of hard. For our last day on Friday, we improved some stream crossings to get the trails ready for hikers and the horses that were delivering the materials for the next week’s WTA crew.

Over the whole week there were only eight high school volunteers, including ourselves, who worked on the bridge, as well as our two crew leaders, Steve and Colleen. We were the only two girl volunteers on the trip, and we had an amazing time since everyone was willing to try anything! We all grew really close over the week, cooking together every morning and night, working during the day, swimming in the evenings, and playing plenty of games in the middle.

After nights in the rain and enduring thunderstorms, we would huddle around the camp fire and entertain ourselves with countless riddles and stories. Some of the boys even whittled bats out of the limbs from around the camp site, and we made baseballs out of duck tape and oatmeal. We would play a game of baseball almost every day on our little home made field, using the trees as bases. We had a great time, and we will always have fond memories of our baseball, Frisbee, and hacky-sack games. 

Beautiful puncheon on the trail to Hyas Lake, completed by the Backcountry Youth Volunteer Vacation crew.

On our off hours we found plenty of activities to keep us busy and entertained! The very first day we all tramped around in the brushes trying to find an old abandoned trail that might lead to a waterfall across the lake, which we sadly never found. We swam every single day, which felt so good after a day of hard work, especially with the warm 90 degree heat. Once we even swam out to a log, only 15 feet long, and all 10 of us crammed onto it, played games, and dove off. For our day off, on Wednesday, we hiked up to Tuck Lake, a smaller lake above Hyas Lake. It was about an eight mile round trip with quite a bit of elevation gain and excellent views of Cathedral Peak and Mt. Daniel. At Tuck Lake, we enjoyed the sun, swimming to a beautiful little island in the middle and jumping off countless times. After our swim we climbed to the top of a huge rock that overlooked the whole valley. The view was breath taking, and we took plenty of pictures to remember that remarkable day!

We had an incredible week and can’t wait for next year’s trips! We would like to thank Steve, Colleen, and everyone from WTA for giving us the experience of a lifetime. See you on the trails!