Mike took over for me this month as I headed out to Nevada and Lake Tahoe.
We spent a couple of hours filling a wheel barrow with leaves and bringing them down to the falls along with dragging over any dead branches and trees we could find. By the end we were cutting up down Tan Oaks off the Sequoia Trail and dragging them down the hill, across Sky Meadow Rd and to the falls area. When finished the area looked a lot better and hopefully our work and the winter rains will encourage people to stay where they belong - on the viewing platform.
Although
the plan was to work the Basin Trail and likely a lot of brushing, a
couple of other things came up when we got to headquarters. Susan Blake
mentioned she had come across a Madrone on the East Ridge Trail up off
Lodge Rd that was blocking the trail, so Dale Petersen and Pete Gelblum
headed out with a chainsaw to take care of it.
The main project for the day came up after several park staff
mentioned that way too many visitors to Sempervirens Falls were climbing
over the railings and trampling what little vegetation that was there
to begin with. The goal was re-duff the area (bad choice of words on my
part as the reaction from the crew was about the same as if I said let's
spend eight hours brushing a trail!) so it looked more natural and to
hopefully deter people from jumping the fence.
Duff around the Falls
We spent a couple of hours filling a wheel barrow with leaves and bringing them down to the falls along with dragging over any dead branches and trees we could find. By the end we were cutting up down Tan Oaks off the Sequoia Trail and dragging them down the hill, across Sky Meadow Rd and to the falls area. When finished the area looked a lot better and hopefully our work and the winter rains will encourage people to stay where they belong - on the viewing platform.
After eating lunch at the falls and admiring our work, we headed
off to look for a tree that was reported down on the Skyline-to-Sea
Trail between Creeping Forest and the Maddock Cabin Site. As we headed
out, Ranger Emily mentioned there was an ultra marathon coming down from
Castle Rock and we were likely to run into 'sweaty people'. As we
walked along from the Gazos Creek picnic area we asked several runners
if they saw any down trees and the responses ranged from 'Just a little
ahead' to 'We didn't see anything'.
As we got closer to the Maddock Cabin Site end we came across a
small 2-4 inch Tan Oak laying across the trail that didn't seem large
enough to even generate a tree down report. It was quickly cut up by
hand and rolled off the trail even before the entire crew gathered.
A couple of minutes further along the trail we found what we were
really looking for; an 8-10 inch Tan Oak. There had been a steady stream
of runners as we had walked out, but we were lucky to catch a break and
cut and remove the down tree without interfering with any of the
runners.
The crew put in 44 hours and thanks to Norm Beeson, David Bryan, Peter
Gelblum, Janie Liefhelm, Dale Petersen, Dale Stadelman and new comer
Chris DeKonink, for coming out.
Mike