New coat brightens 'C' on the hill

After a number of hours, a lot of sweat and a few tears, the "C" on the hills west of Carson City has a new winter coat.

Mark Amodei said the painting project, which actually began at the end of July, has taken a number early morning and late afternoon hikes to complete.

"We thought it was Forest Service ground, at first," he said. Eventually, it was discovered that the property was on private property and that it was OK to climb to the top of the hill and repair the large C.

"It had been almost five years since anything had been done with it," Amodei said. "The rocks had been scattered and whitewash had worn thin."

He said the entire project had started out as just a couple of guys who wanted to make a difference. The morning climb was sort of a way to get into shape.

Eventually, there were 12 men who worked to complete the project.

"When it started to get darker, we started going in the afternoons," he said. "It was interesting in the morning because it was so dark, but it wasn't dark for long."

The men measured and equaled the width of the sides and bottoms, and made sure the formation was square.

"There were a lot of rocks that had been rolled away, and that took a lot longer to equal out than we had at first expected," he said.

The final work on the project took place on the past two weekends. Whitewashing the letter to make it bright took some tactical work.

"Some people use brooms, old mops or things like that to spread around," Amodei said. "I just took the bucket and threw it out. When the others saw how quickly it spread, everyone was tossing it."

He said that the people who worked on the project did it for free. They just wanted to bring it back into shape, he said.

The whitewash he said was made out of an original formula. Amodei said that he had been looking around for cheap paint to use, and just happened upon the recipe while talking to Storey County Commissioner Charles "Bum" Hess. Hess said that the recipe is the same one the Storey Jeep Posse uses to paint the "V" in Virginia City.

"It was about 1/10th the cost of paint," he said, "and it was what they originally used."

He added that the whitewash is "biodegradable."