The May 14th workday turned out to be the first warm one of the season with temperatures reaching about 80 as we continued work on the Redwood Loop Trail. With the loss of tree canopy in much of Big Basin during the CZU fire, the usually cool redwood forest is now warmer than before the fire. Not as sunny as the ridgetop chaparral, but still warm and we began to feel the effects as the day wore on.
Open heat sink
Father of the Forest
Much of the major work along the RWL has been completed and we are now doing detail work which in many ways is more difficult as we need to decide what looks best, what to remove and what to keep. We focused on the area around the Mother of the Forest with the usual removal of burned huckleberry stands and carrying it to burn piles, but the nature of the detail aspects of the work and the warm weather slowed things down.
We decided to wrap things up 30 minutes early, but were still able to finish two burn piles started on a previous workday along with starting and completing three additional burn piles.
Despite the warm temperature, we still had a good turnout of 21 with the crew putting in 152 hours and thanks to Arnold Arcolio, Nan Bowman, Alison Breeze, Jim Brooks, Rory Brooks, John Collins, Tess Fitzgerald, Peter Gelblum, John Martin, Jordan McDaniel, Whitney Mitchell, Mike Peasland, Aaron Poulos, Mike Rhoades, Devdutt Sheth , Bill Ton, Bruce Washburn, Chris Young and first time folks Sean Miller, Lisa Nichols and Paul Walter, for coming out on the first warm day of the season.
by Mike and Jeff
photos by Mike, Alison, Bruce, and Sean