We have pretty much reached the end of our adventure at the camp up on Mingus mountain.
This will be our final week of work there. Things are starting to freeze over up there, their budget is used up, and we have other responsibilities calling us.
And what a week it promises to be. We are up against it-the push is on to get this last phase of work completed and get our gear off the mountain. And it will be a push! There’s tons of work we need to complete: demo out a large portion of questionable electrical panels and wiring, replace it with new gear installed correctly, add another sub panel and feeder conduit/wiring, patch together a double handful of messed up branch circuits, complete some more lighting renovations, and add a piece of restaurant equipment. Good thing we’ve got a large crew of two of us!😄😄😬
Our first hurdle of the week: we got word late last week that the forest service is closing the only access road in to this place every day this week from 7am to 7pm. So not only do we need to get here extra early-we’re basically locked in once we get here, and if we need to make some sort of emergency parts run-not happening. Great.
The good news was we would have the entire place to ourselves the whole week, so there would be no interruptions.
So once again, our Sunday was largely spent loading up the service truck and getting the equipment trailer ready to retrieve our skiddy and Joel’s favorite scissor lift.
Monday morning, 2:55am: the alarm went off disappointingly early. We had one hour to get up, wake up, load up our last minute food items, and hit the road in order to beat the road closure.
Denise and I stumbled around grumping and bitching about lack of sleep, how dark and cold it was, and wondering why the fuck we have not won the lottery yet. Somehow, we got out shit together and got out of the yard right on schedule.
We stopped at the end of the dirt road for one last vehicle and load check.
Nothing had rattled loose from the Freightshaker, so we strapped in and pointed the ol girl at the I40 and headed East.
I rowed the 10 speed through the gears, dumped it into overdrive, and let the miles unroll behind us in the cold darkness of the early morning.
We stopped briefly for fuel, then headed south and finally began the steep climb up the mountain with a faint tinge of color finally starting to paint the sky ahead of us. We reached Camp at what I’d call first shooting light, unloaded our food and gear, and then dove right into the week’s adventures.
Our first task was changing out a bunch of light fixtures in the bath houses, and that fought us every step of the way with wiring issues that needed fixing before the new fixtures could be installed, awkward light locations, and just general fuckery. It took us an agonizing half a day to R&R 8 fixtures. 😬🙄 I hated all of it so much, I didn’t even take a single picture. 😄😄
Then we moved our whole operation to another section of camp to completely rewire a little bbq gazebo.
We had some company for this.
They seemed completely unaware that thanksgiving was just around the corner and they were maybe in danger. 😄😬
Here’s the little gazebo once we were done with it.
By the time we wrapped that up, it was 6:30 at night and we were beat. We retreated to the trailer for a much needed beverage and some sleep.
While Monday was a success, the truth is those two tasks were actually supposed to have been completed last week, and despite our efforts, we were starting the week already a day behind.
The next several days are going to be a grind.