With almost four years since the CZU fires of 2020 vegetative regrowth is becoming more prolific, making it sometimes difficult to lay out trail routes for clearing. Especially when a reroute takes us away from the old trail corridor.
Many times the initial work is just a guess of where the trail will go, but final decisions can't be made until the initial vegetation is cleared away and we can see what the area looks like. This was the case on a Sequoia Trail reroute the Trail Crew has been working the past couple of outings.
The effort started with the Feb. 24 workday as we began a new alignment the District Crew had flagged for clearing with work continuing into early March. After the March 9th workday, the Trails supervisor made a visit to check and noticed a section of cleared trail that included a low lying area while just above was a bench that would provide a better alignment. (A 'bench' is narrow strip of relatively level or gently inclined ground with steeper slopes above and below.)
That's where he wanted the trail to go!
With a crew of 16 for the day, we split into two groups with one jumping ahead about 100 yards to continue clearing work there while the others began cutting and removing vegetation from the uphill bench and tossing it onto the now unneeded trail segment from earlier workdays.
The ground was wet from recent rains and with many people working in a small area things became slippery after a while, but good progress was made and by the end of the day a rough cut had been completed along the entire length of the bench.
The crew put in 119 hours and thanks to Fremont Bainbridge, Nan Bowman, Jim Brooks, Rory Brooks, Cecil Coe, John Collins, Mimi Guiney, Steve Kennedy, Andrea Lee, John Martin, Joe Mitchell, Mike Peasland, Zosia Stafford, Chris Young, Jason Zheng, and newcomer Ashley Melo, for the help on a wet, muddy, slippery, workday.
by Mike and Jeff
photos by Mike