With our work on the Creeping Forest Trail ended, the Nov. 18th workday was a quick stop on the Blooms Creek Connector Trail. This is a short section between the Redwood Loop and the old Blooms Creek Campground and it will provide access to Middle Ridge via the Hihn Hammond fire road. So more clearing, felling of trees, and creating burn piles.
The trail is more of a sidewalk than actual hiking trail as its sole purpose prior to the CZU fires was to allow campers to travel between the Blooms Creek Campground and the HQ area without walking on the road or using their cars. It's a short stretch we had seldom worked on over the decades and we weren't even sure the distance or how long it would take to complete the work.
The answer turned out to be 1/4 of a mile and a short five hour workday which was fine since it was also our first wet day since last winter.
Fortunately park staff decided not to realign the trail from it's pre-fire days and the Ceanothus thickets that we have encountered on trails climbing from the Basin floor, was largely absent. The old trail even had a decomposed granite tread base so it was easy to follow.
The work included the usual removal of several down trees along with vegetative regrowth from the trail corridor and moving everything into four newly constructed burn piles. With a crew of 17, the effort proceeded so quickly that by noon we decided to take only a short lunch break since we were almost finished.
The crew put in 109 hours and thanks to Daryn Bieri, John Bodley, Jim Brooks, Rory Brooks, John Collins, Denis DeCeuster, Tommy Ha, Marc Koenig, Andrea Lee, Janie Leifhelm, Joe Mitchell, Mike Peasland, Corrie Potter, Craig Ramsay, Devdutt Sheth, Chris Young, and newcomer Alex Papanic, for their efforts on a damp workday.