Gorge Lake Trail - 7/12

So last night wasn’t exactly over.  Here in Montana it doesn’t get dark until 10pm, so when we finished our quota of trail and found ourselves with hours of daylight left we broke out the game Risk (which we had just discovered under a seat in our vehicle).  I played the game as a Stark would, honoring allegiances and being a man of my word… and I won.  At the start of the game my sole intent was to play spoiler as my troops were divided, but wildcard Chelsea mad e a couple of crippling attacks on our other players, which kept me in the game.  Normally the Iron Throne (or world domination) cannot be achieved without backstabbing and deceit, but yeah, it just happened.

No sooner had I won the game then thunder boomed outside.  We packed all of our gear in a record breaking time and drove out of our hazardous camp.  The road was in rough shape and we were near a roaring stream—with rain we easily could have gotten trapped up there where radios and cell phones were useless.  As it were, we made it back onto the pavement and called HQ.  Bruce said he was looking at the radar and there was no severe weather in our area…as lightning was touching down all around us.  Still, he is our boss and is experienced in disaster situations so we took his word for it and ended up sleeping in the truck.

Fast forward to today: we cleared the Gorge Lake Trail with some serious effort.  Liana and I had trouble with our saw so we manually moved or broke what trees we could that blocked the path. My shining moment was when I moved a 30 foot tree with a width of about 18 inches on my own.  I felt like a boss.  Again, the elevation from our starting point to finish has a 2000 foot difference.  Man, Montana is hilly!  That or we are just the lucky ones this week.  Regardless we got the job done and returned to Fleecer where the other teams graciously let us use the newly fixed shower first.  Not to go and relax.  Tomorrow is the Folk Festival so we need to recharge while we can.  Later all!