It's been a LONG time since we've done actual trail construction. The type of grunt work that is important to ensuring Big Basin maintains its reputation for having a great trail system, but it is tiring and sends you home with aching muscles at the end of the day (work area red hexagon).
Our August workday turned to be our second day working on trail reconstruction as 12 Trail Crew members joined the State Crew on a reroute of the Skyline-to-Sea Trail just north of the Maddock's Cabin Site. The old trail dropped into a low spot in that area and during the winter is often wet and muddy. The plan for the day was to raise the trail up higher, as in let's put it up on that hillside.
In some sections it was straight forward work while other areas required standing on the unstable hillside as we did a rough cut on the new tread base and then worked our way down to firm ground. And then there was the one sharp turn in the trail where we just took out an entire corner of hill to make the turn more gradual.
It took a lot of effort and perhaps left some thinking that brushing on a leisurely summer workday wouldn't be so bad after all, but by the end of the work we had a nice stretch of mostly finished trail to look back on.
After the trail construction we headed to the Redwood Loop to take care of an Oak. We used the new Zombi electric saw to clear it.
Oak on the Redwood Loop
New electric saw and cleared Oak
Days end group photo by Jose
Photo of the tired crew at the end of the day: Mike
Or that those (mostly) old folks did it. Thanks for this, Mike: Peter
Who’da thought that, only “minutes” before, that trail was a mountainside! Okay… maybe hours ([sic] or days): David Bryan
The crew put in 89 hours with thanks to David Bryan, Michele Gelblum, Peter Gelblum, Shyamal Kapadia, Laurie King, Janie Leifhelm, Mike Peasland, Dale Petersen, David Philleo, Yagya Regmi, Dale Stadelman and Chris Young, for coming out and Jose and Matt from the State Crew for arranging and supervising the work.
by Mike, Chris, and Jeff
photos by Chris, Jose, Mike, and Shyamal