BCHW – Buckhorn & Peninsula Chapters Report
Project location: Olympic National Park Mule Coral
Date: October 29th & 30th
Written by: Rebecca Wanagel
Due to the government shutdown and resulting furlough of four out of the five Olympic National Park packers, Heidi Brill, lead packer, was tasked with the annual shut down of the corral and the tending and moving of all the mules to their winter pastures. Normally the five packers would be working on this together.
Tom Mix asked if BCHW could help. He ended up going to the superintendent to get special permission for this because the ONP is not currently allowing any volunteers during the shutdown.
Once the word was put out, 14 volunteers signed on. That resulted in an amazing amount of corral seasonal shut-down work being done in two days. While Heidi was taking off shoes, trimming hooves and moving dozens of mules to Jamestown and other pastures, BCHW volunteers did the following tasks:
- Clean and oil tools
- Scrape the mud field inside mule fence with the tractor
- Move hay, clean out semi
- Clean and oil tack
- Patch all the manties
- Retrieve mule string warning signs from bypasses
- Move, clean, dry and restack stainless steel bear and plastic gear boxes
- Relocate wooden gear boxes
- Remove shades
- Clean and winterize chainsaws
Buckhorn Range Chapter - Back Country Horsemen of WA 