The last several days have been spent trying to come up with the proper way to mark this Monday's fifth year after the CZU fires that tore through Big Basin.  With the pandemic, 2020 seemed to get harder by the week and it bottomed out on the night of Tuesday August 18th when fire burned through the main visitor area. 

The Trail Crew typically schedules a mid-summer lunch for August in the hope it'll be a warm day that will make wrapping up work early even nicer. Our August 9th workday was just that day.

One of the lessons learned as we did the final work on Sequoia Trail was not to put off for too long the final detail work. We sometimes focus too much on the initial clearing effort since it provides the greatest sense of accomplishment, but it can result in long periods of detail trail work that becomes tedious after a while.

After 18 months on Sequoia Trail, the July 12th workday brought us to the beginning of a new challenge as we began clearing the 1.8 mile Pine Mountain Trail that will eventually take us to Buzzards Roost and arguably one of the best viewpoints in Big Basin.  We had made a scouting visit to the area on June 30th to scout out the new work area.

The Trail Crew has been fortunate to attract new people and keep them coming back and one of the main draws is the ability to make a visible impact in a single workday. Whether clearing winter blowdowns and reopening a trail in the pre-CZU fire days or clearing the wall of regrowth that has taken over many trail corridors since the 2020 fires, seeing the impact of your effort each workday is what keeps many on the Crew returning. 

After the Trail Crew's May 31st effort didn't go as well as hoped due to the first hot workday of the year, problems with two different chainsaws and slower than expected progress, we were looking for better luck on June 14th and got it!  Temperatures were about 15 degrees cooler, chainsaws worked and we made good progress as we took another step toward finishing our portion of work on Sequoia Trail.  

The Trail Crew is fortunate that workdays typically go as planned, but not always and May 31st was one of those days!  The first warm day of the season (and hotter than forecasted), more work than anticipated, and problems with two chainsaws all made for a challenging day. 

With the Crew's May 3rd workday canceled due to Big Basin's closure because of forecasted winds of 35-45 mph and lots of standing dead trees from the 2020 fires, we were back to work on May 17th. We're nearing the end of work on the section of Sequoia Trail between Hwy 236 and N. Escape Rd, so the dramatic impact of turning a thickly overgrown hillside into a trail is behind us. 

We're getting close to the end of our work on Sequoia Trail, so after our May 3rd 2025 workday was canceled due to high winds and a park closure we'll be back out to finish up on the Sequoia. We still have sections of trail that have debris stacked along the edges that needs to find a permanent home. So probably 1-2 days more work on Sequoia.

After splitting into two crews on the previous workday, our April 19th outing had everyone back together. We started from the Hwy 236 end of Sequoia Trail for the first time. With lots of debris remaining from earlier clearing work, the larger woody pieces were scattered in downhill areas while the slash was placed on tarps, carried along the trail and across the highway to a large clearing above Slippery Rock where four burn piles were constructed.