Mt. Yale Field Training

Hey All!
We spent the last few days on Mt. Yale with the rest of the CFI Seasonal staff and leaders from Rocky Mountain Youth Corps and Southwest Conservation Corps. We worked on outdoor leadership training, base camp setup and trail and alpine restoration work.
Our crew specific task was to repair a retaining wall on the Mt. Yale reroute set to be completed this year. Hot Shot Supervisor Ben Turati is entering his eleventh season in trail work, and second with CFI, which made this training session a great opportunity to ask lots of questions and learn from his experience before we really get our hands dirty in the coming months.
We also got some training in Alpine Ecology and restoration work from John Giordanengo, a former CFI staffer. We worked with other CFI and SCC leaders, transplanting grasses and forbs into an eroded section of trail and constructing restoration check dams, which I have to say is a nice change of pace from shoving, heaving, and smashing big rocks into place.
In the end, though rock work sometimes leaves me feeling like I'm pounding a massive square peg into a gaping round hole, the great weather, sweeping views, awesome co-workers, and the chance to get some work in on the trail made our short training session on Mt. Yale a great experience.