As the January workday approached we seemed to face two opposing forces, a shortened workday due to the afternoon Holiday Party and winter weather that left trail issues in almost every part of the park - Skyline-to-Sea, Sequoia, Creeping Forest, Dool, Sunset. And those were just the ones we knew about in advance.
We began the day in the HQ office as the morning was chilly and drizzling and Park Interpreter Susan Blake got things off to a good start by presenting Dale Petersen with the Golden Poppy Award for volunteer service to State Parks. Dale has been with the Trail Crew for 40 years and participated in special projects like construction of the Basin and Eagle Rock Trails, Kirsch Trail and Schultz Bridge, along with hundreds of just routine trail workdays. Just another example of the dedication that makes our work special.
Dale Receives CA Poppy Award for 40 Years Volunteer Service with BBVTC
After discussions on how much we could accomplish in a short workday, we decided to split into three crews and go for them all!
Mike’s Crew worked on Sequoia & STS
The Sequoia-STS crew decided to tackle the Sequoia trail first as it looked like the easier of the two reported issues with a scouting photo showing what looked like a 2-ft Doug fir with people stepping over it. The only concern hiking up was would we be able to keep the cut sections of tree contained to the trail edge as North Escape Rd was immediately below the steep hillside next to the trail. Fortunately everything went smoothly and we had the trail cleared within about 20 minutes.
The STS work was a little more involved as expected with a 3-ft Doug fir having dropped on top of a small footbridge, so we needed to remove the tree without further damaging the bridge while keeping the cut rounds out of the drainage. As we cut the tree back to the bridge, we wrapped a cable around the section of tree being cut and used a rope to pull it clear of the bridge as the cut was completed. We removed the tree from the trail and bridge in a couple of hours.
The State Trail Crew came out a couple of days later to complete repairs to the bridge so a great team effort by both crews.
Photos by Kile Foltz
Dale’s Crew work on Creeping Forest/Dool
After the usual milling about, 5 of us went to clear some small trees on Creeping Forest and Dool trails. The two trees on Creeping Forest had all ready been taken care of. We did find a large tree that blocked the trail so we did a reroute around it. The reroute was mostly a little brushing and lopping. Dool trail was a large branch with mostly just the leaves and small branches blocking the trail. This was just lopping and getting rid of the trimmings.
We then went out North Escape to meet up with Mike and his crew. A couple of 2 footers blocking the trail and laying on the foot bridge. We helped clear this.
Chris’ Crew Work on Sunset
Jan, David B., Lisa, John Martin and myself took on the job of clearing a tree reported blocking the trail on Sunset just passed the Timm's Creek junction. We drove up to Middle Ridge Fire road and parked at the Sunset trail junction there and started hiking in right around 10am. We encountered an unreported tan oak blocking Sunset early on but luckily it was small and we cleared it in just a few minutes.
Otherwise our hike was uneventful, although muddy towards Timm's Creek and we located the job site just around 11:15am. Jan and Lisa did a fair amount of brushing on the hike in (in fact Jan was so focused on the brushing that she arrived at the site just in time to turn around and hike back out!). There were two trees to clear, one small tan oak and a double trunk 15" tan oak. We cleaned up the slash and I started to work on bucking the trees.
We did notice a bind on the larger tan oak and I was a bit lucky when it let go so I'll be sure to give an extra dose of caution going forward. We pushed the sections to the downward side of the hill and a hiker even remarked that the saw dust helped soak up some of the mud.
We hiked back out the car and drove back to the tool shed, arriving right at 2pm, perfectly timed to head to the crew party at the pizza pub.
The last crew for the day returned to the tool shed about 1:45 and everyone headed into Boulder Creek to celebrate the new year with pizza and beer.
The crew put in 70 hrs in a shortened work day and thanks to David Bryan, John Collins, Michele Gelblum, Peter Gelblum, Jan Hill, John Martin, Lisa Mauney, Mike Peasland, Dale Petersen, Dale Stadelman and Chris Young, along with newcomers Lucas Myers and his son Noah who was working on his high school volunteer hours.
by Mike, Dale P., Chris, and Jeff
photos by Mike, Kile, Lisa, and Chris