Oh hey Capitol, how’s it going? Can we jump on your trail and give you some work?

So I will begin by saying that this trip was so awesome in so many ways, even though it was exhausting in a whole new kind of way. Well, it was mostly just the hike in.

Now, we wanted to eat well. We always try to achieve this with every trip we take. Frances and I can put away a ton of food, and there’s nothing worse than finishing a day of trail work and having barely enough food to keep the tummy from growling. So naturally we pack a lot of food for ourselves. However, when left in charge of purchasing food for an entire group for five days, we made the egregious error of assuming that everyone eats like us.

Let me put this in perspective. Frances and I are training for an eating competition in Denver, where you eat for free if you can finish a 7-pound burrito. I’ll eat an entire frozen pizza for lunch (I did today) and still be hungry for a snack around mid-afternoon. When we eat, we EAT. So we accounted for eight Evans and Franceses in our food calculations. We ate well, but holy moley, that five-mile hike in nearly obliterated me.

Which brings me to our awesome volunteers. Say hello ya’ll.

Aren’t they a happy bunch. These guys and gals endured the grueling hike in with smiles and laughs, only to maintain that positive attitude through a day and a half of rain so bad we couldn’t even get the stoves working long enough to eat a hot dinner. Seriously, if you see any of these folks on the street, shake their hand. Because they’re wonderful.

Not only did they stay chipper during the entire trip, but after the rains ended, they did some great work too. One crew put in a bunch of solid check steps on a section of trail that was steep and completely fall line. Show it off crew.

Oh, I didn’t know we were going to get a free ticket to the gun show too. Man, I love the obligatory flexing picture.

And then the other crew built some great stairs around a steep switchback. It looked like this:

There’s nothing there! Well, if you climb Capitol now, this is what you’ll see:

Gorgeous! But they didn’t stop there. They said, “Let’s build a sweet monowall and back wall on the saddle!” And that just what they did. Check it out.