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alpine areas where most trail structures—steps, retainers, culverts, walls—are made of rock, not metal, not wood. (Above treeline, the tiny gnarled alpine larch and Krumholtz spruce hold little architectural potential.) A rock bar is typically five feet long, weighing sixteen to eighteen pounds with a beveled tip.
    Simple Machine    A rock bar works because of leverage. Slide the beveled end under a rock, the curve facing the ground. With fulcrum in place, push down slightly on the handle and the rock will lift, your effort magnified. If the curve faces the rock, not the ground, the fulcrum is misplaced and any advantage will slip away. As with all hand tools, the rock bar asks for wise use. (A tool, like a word, can be used badly, its beauty rendered moot by carelessness.) Physics ignored, the rock bar is just a heavy stick.
    Safety    A fulcrum operates on the pinching principle, so careful monitoring of hands (in gloves) and toes (in leather boots) is a must. A rock bar is often used with more than one person, so teamwork becomes critical. Make sure everyone involved understands the big picture, each step in the move before it begins. If you don’t know what’s happening, or if you enter the scene late, please stay out of the way.
    Weight    A rock bar is made of tempered steel, with almost no flex even under great pressure. Its weight, though loathsome when hiking it on your shoulder, has a clearly apparent advantage when compared with a shovel, which, if used to pry, almost always snaps at the handle or bends at the head. A rock bar’s weight is also handy when the tool is used as a drop hammer to widen cracks in rock or drive in a stubborn chock.
    Comparison    Things you carry over your shoulder that are heavier than a rock bar: the powerhead of a rock drill, a gassed-up 036 chainsaw, an axe with a full five-gallon Dolmar hung off the handle, a power brusher, a cluster of zip-tied rebar, a burlap sack of log spikes, a Griphoist. What’s lighter than a rock bar: an empty 026 chainsaw, a rock rake, a shovel, a pair of skis, tent poles, an eight-foot two-by-six, a fishing rod.
    Relatives    Don’t mistake the digging bar (or spud bar) for a rock bar—a digging bar is five or six feet long with a paddle blade on one end and a disk handle on the other, and unsupervised, a green laborer may grab it from the tool cache. The blade handily digs postholes, and the disk tamps down dirt, but the bar is too long and flexible for prying, and if you use it for rockwork, you’re courting an iron fist to the teeth. A crowbar—some versions known as a wonder bar or cat’s paw—has a curved claw for pulling up nails and removing joined beams or spiked logs, but is too short for rock use. Other steel bars have a squared-off end and can be used for tamping and battering, but the lack of a bevel will make them ineffectual tools for moving heavy things.
    Common Injuries    A bloody lip from a slipped handle or a crewmate who moves in an unpredictable manner; a strained lower back, when tempted to dead-lift instead of prying or rowing; split fingers or pinched toes, when a rock suddenly slips its fulcrum and finds its natural resting place; tarnished pride, when sometimes, at 125 pounds soaking wet, even with a rock bar’s mechanical advantage, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Also, watch your crotch when lifting off a fulcrum. Never straddle the bar’s handle. If it slips with you above it, you’ll holler (female) or puke (male).

Chapter 2. Sperry: Alpine
    (All I ever needed to know I learned above tree line)
    The story of the Sperry Trail crew is the story of women. In a field where “boys” outnumber “girls” by roughly the same margin as in childhood sandlot baseball games, the Sperry district—one of the alpine kingdoms on Glacier’s west side—was, during my trails tenure, run by