We came, we saw, we kicked some Tammie ass...
It was an amazing week, with a great cast of characters. When your commute starts like this, you know you've got an awesome job:
After we arrived at our beach and welcomed the boats full of wonderful food, important gear, even more important beer and recently harvested 'poles' (I'll get to that in a minute), we settled in. I felt great, and I could tell these were my kinds of folks...botanists, biologists, Landscape Architects, river guides and volunteers. Just the roster I'd put on my fantasy employment team.
Most of our time that week was spent removing the last stands of thick tamarisk from the study area. Two things made this process even more strenuous than you might think: first, the nature of tammies and second the needs of the project which dictated that the trees not only be felled, but that their carcasses be completely removed from the site.
First: the nature of tammies. Although many of the plants we were removing were the size of small trees (20' tall by 30-40' wide), they aren't trees at all but big, overgrown shrubs. This means that they've got active growing branches all the way down to the ground. In order to even get at the larger trunks, you have to crawl and saw and beat your way through the woody, salty and twiggy goodness. Fun.
Second: hauling away the carcasses. Not being a veteran of other vegetation removal projects, I was unaware that it's unusual to actually remove the debris from downing the tamarisk. However, it is very obvious, no matter what your level of experience, the reason that they usually don't. It's a HUGE job - much larger than actually cutting down the trees.
First, you cut the branch of the tree (no small feat considering we had no power tools).
Then you cut the branch into bits no larger than 3-4' in length.
Then you pile the bits into a heap and carry the heavy, misshapen heap across this rocky gravel bar...
And then finally pitch them into the rapids (without also pitching yourself, which would be bad.)
Yup. These rapids. Not a good place to go swimming (at least the guy in the video has a PFD on).
Of course, though tammie whackin' was a big part of my involvement in this trip, it is only one part of the much larger project. This meant that there were many things to do when you were tired of/frustrated by/beaten over the tamarisk.
The most fun, and simultaneously most frustrating, was planting the 'poles' that had been harvested from other drainages upstream. These were cottonwood, coyote willow and Goodings willow shoots that had been collected by the team and carried down by boat to be planted on Granite Beach.
The theory is, with these riparian species, their natural adaptation to patterns of flood would work to our advantage. As long as the cutting is fresh, it will sprout leaves and roots when exposed correctly to soil and water, creating a whole new tree. This saves the plants when a devastating flood wipes out a population and all that's left are bits of new wood buried in the recently deposited flood debris.
Clever folks, these, and a clever way they'd planned on planting them. It's called 'the Water Auger'.
Blast a hole in the sand using nothing but a 7' long stick and high-pressure water from the river, leaving behind a nice, wet environment for the stick to establish itself in. Perfect! Of course, there were two or three small problems, and the diminutive height of several of the team members was not one of them.
They're all the things that make the Grand Canyon grand. Remoteness, rocks and weather...
Remoteness because a single broken part on the top of the water auger itself wasn't easy to fix at the bottom of the canyon. Though they'd managed a jerry-rig at Phantom Ranch the day before, it was still temperamental and at times it just wouldn't work well.
As this was a 'pilot' project, it wasn't clear whether or not the water auger would even dig in the rocky gravelbars at the river's edge. Lesson learned: it doesn't. Not really, anyhow. It dominates the soft sands of the beach, but if you've got any sort of gravel down there, you'll slow to a crawl or stop altogether. Frustrating when you know you've got to get the poles planted no matter what.
And weather...well...it's the Grand Canyon in February. What did we expect? (Hint, not this)
Oh - and I almost forgot about the beaver...
It was an amazing week, with a great cast of characters. When your commute starts like this, you know you've got an awesome job:
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| Traffic up on the Tonto...at least they're all my co-workers! |
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| The boats arrive and immediately begin disgorging stuff... |
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| My first attempt at a camp... |
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| The team surveys the battlefield |
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| A tamarisk in its pokey glory |
First, you cut the branch of the tree (no small feat considering we had no power tools). 
Then you cut the branch into bits no larger than 3-4' in length.
Then you pile the bits into a heap and carry the heavy, misshapen heap across this rocky gravel bar...
And then finally pitch them into the rapids (without also pitching yourself, which would be bad.)
Yup. These rapids. Not a good place to go swimming (at least the guy in the video has a PFD on).
Of course, though tammie whackin' was a big part of my involvement in this trip, it is only one part of the much larger project. This meant that there were many things to do when you were tired of/frustrated by/beaten over the tamarisk.
The most fun, and simultaneously most frustrating, was planting the 'poles' that had been harvested from other drainages upstream. These were cottonwood, coyote willow and Goodings willow shoots that had been collected by the team and carried down by boat to be planted on Granite Beach.
 |
| Sorting the poles off the boat. |
Clever folks, these, and a clever way they'd planned on planting them. It's called 'the Water Auger'.
 |
| The water auger at work and the first successful cottonwood pole! |
Blast a hole in the sand using nothing but a 7' long stick and high-pressure water from the river, leaving behind a nice, wet environment for the stick to establish itself in. Perfect! Of course, there were two or three small problems, and the diminutive height of several of the team members was not one of them.
They're all the things that make the Grand Canyon grand. Remoteness, rocks and weather...
Remoteness because a single broken part on the top of the water auger itself wasn't easy to fix at the bottom of the canyon. Though they'd managed a jerry-rig at Phantom Ranch the day before, it was still temperamental and at times it just wouldn't work well.
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| This is the type of digging the auger is made for |
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| This is the kind of stuff we had to dig with - NOT what the water auger was made for! |
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| Running from a cloudburst headed our way... |
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| Yup - snow on the ground at river level! |
Oh - and I almost forgot about the beaver...
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