Life after Americorps. Since completing AmeriCorps NCCC I've moved to the mountains. Currently residing in Silverthorne Colorado. Conveniently located near Keystone, Arapaho Basin, Breckenridge and Vail ski resorts. I've found gainful employment driving a bus for Keystone resort. The perks are a ski pass, best starting pay at the resort, free CDL training and a sweet ride (Blue Bird).
Future goals? I've sent applications to US Forest Service Hotshot crews in CO, NM and UT. All 9 of whom I've been in contact with and will be visiting this winter. As for now I'm working toward 100 days of riding and Cross Country skiing.

ADK chair

IMG_2178, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Gift to the Forest Service

Thank you USFS. The two wildfire teams with our limited resources got together to purchase an Adirondack chair for the Forest Service. We then burned the Americorps logo and USFS logo into the wood with a soldering iron. Next our names were burned in and the chair was stained and weather proofed. The finishing touch is a last minute inspiration to define the rule of "Fives". Fives was often used at the FS work center. Most of the definition is adapted from a Wikapedia definition. It might be hard to read the definition in the picture so here it is.

Fives. A convention used to retain ownership of a particular seat during a temporary vacancy. While departing from their seat the caller declares "fives" and is granted exactly five minutes absence during which time their seat will not be available to others.

In other news my father contacted the Brighton Pittsford Post and they decided to interviewed me for an article. The article was recently published.
Link to article PDF:
Brighton Pittsford Post

Gift from Forest Service to Americorps NCCC

IMG_2165, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Some of my pictures will be up in the Americorps offices for future corps members to see!

Clock is winding down. Americorps service commitment ends on Nov 15. Thursday this week will be the last day working with the Forest Service. As a gift to Americorps the FS gave a plaque for the main offices in Denver. It turned out a good number of the pictures on the plaque are ones I took this year. Came as a complete surprise since a team mate submitted them for me.

As for life after Americorps... I've been putting in applications to CO ski resorts Vail, Keystone and Eldora. Seasonal FS wildfire jobs start getting posted in December. I'm looking at hotshot crews in NM, NV, AZ and CO.

YMCA of the Rockies. Spent the last two days at a conference for Americorps entitled Legacy. Most branches of Americorps were represented (Vista, Senior corps, etc). The lectures were awful so I spent my time hiking in the camp and the bordering Rocky Mountain National Park. I don't have any pictures because it was snowing, cloudy or foggy. However, hear the view of the mountains is awesome from the YMCA camp.

The sky is falling.
Looks like over a foot of snow in the mountains tonight. Our goal for tomorrow is to burn some piles of limbs from our forest thinning projects. The rest of the next two weeks will be mostly Squad Boss training (131) and Pumps training.

Settling into camp

IMG_2123, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.