Second Work Day--WTA at Deep Lake--Summer 2013

On September 2nd, we awoke to see that the evening rains had cleared with just a bit of mist lingering over Deep Lake as we were relieved to see the sun breaking out. After another hearty breakfast we headed out to continue converting the rotting puncheons---bridges--to turnpikes----tree stringers packed with rocks and mounded dirt.

Here is a view of Deep Lake from the trail that leads down from Cathedral Rock to our Deep Lake campsite. Our campsite is just beyond the green meadow at the far lower left. Our worksite is the meadow near the Deep Lake Creek outlet, also to the lower right.

There is no cell phone reception along this portion of the Pacific Crest Trail. Our crew leader, Kathy, has a Forest Service radio that she uses to call in at 10AM every morning. The dispatcher asked Kathy if she had seen a Robert, the Forest Service worker who was hauling in some culverts on a mule train for our work at Deep Lake on Saturday. Kathy said she had not seen him and the culverts had not been delivered. Kathy was asked to call back at noon to see if Robert had shown up because his family was worried that he had not called in on Saturday or Sunday.
When Kathy called back at noon, she was asked to launch a search party for Robert. Some returned to the camp for the first aid kit, sleeping bag and some ropes while Kathy gave instructions to the four who would be heading up the trail to Cathedral Rock. Just before they left, I asked Kathy to double check with the Forest Service dispatcher to see if the missing person was not a Robert, but rather me---Richard.
She made the call, and surprise------the family that was worried about their missing family member was mine. The search party was called off so it was back to hauling rocks. I was unable to get a cell phone signal anywhere on the Pacific Crest Trail and when I met up with the WTA group, they did not call back to say that Terry in our group was missing----we had waited for him to show up at the trailhead. Tani had called the WTA number only to leave several messages on voicemail on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. They had no available live person to talk to.
One of the problems was that the culvert delivery got confused with an unaccounted for WTA volunteer. Needless to say, I wrote up some suggestions for WTA to consider in future work parties regarding accounting for volunteers who do not show up.

For the remainder of the day, we continued to haul big rocks to the two turnpikes as the underlayment. Dan spent his time finding and preparing four stringer logs to become the sides of the turnpikes.
The end of the day brought us another gourmet meal of smoked salmon and tortellini in a cheese cream sauce with deserts of dark chocolate bars.