Finished Buck Springs!
Friday, September 6 we returned to Buck Springs for our final weekend of the fence build. After setting up camp, we loaded up some supplies and materials to head up to the job site. One of our workers decided to walk up and was greeted by the sight of a bear. We knew there were bear in the area due to fresh scat we had seen, but this was the first sighting we had seen of one. We continued up to the jobsite and started where we had left off 2 weeks ago. By the time we ended we had finished the top rails on the 3rd side of the fence and had a good start on the last side. Friday night a few of us decided to hike back up to the meadow and were treated with watching a big bull elk and his small harem he had gathered. It was a fun time watching him bugling and keeping the cows in order and herded up.
Saturday morning after breakfast we headed back up to the fence and started working. We broke into 2 teams and the installation of the top rails went really quick. By the time lunch had arrived we only had around 100 yards of rails left to complete. After lunch we heard a little thunder but didn’t think it looked too menacing, so we went back to finish up. We figured we had roughly an hour left to finish. As soon as we got to the site, it started raining, then the rain starting to get harder, then it turned to hail which kept increasing in size. We thought it may be a quick shower so we took shelter under the fir trees. And we did learn that fir trees do not stop marble sized hail very efficiently. We waited as long as we could, and we were all soaked to the bone, so we decided to hike back to camp. The ground had gotten covered by hail at this time and we were walking back through slush. We put on some coffee and water, because the temp had dropped to the low 50’s if not cooler. It rained the rest of the evening so we couldn’t finish the fence. Let’s just say we had a huge campfire Saturday night to dry out.
Sunday, we headed back out to the fence and within an hour had finished up the entire fence build. We are so thankful for all the volunteers who came out and helped us over this 7-weekend period. We also would like to thank the Coconino National Forest and the AZGFD who brought this project to our attention. It feels great to get another big project finished!
If you are interested in helping out at one of our projects, please email me
