After a listless, still recovering from the holidays type of workday to kick off the new year in early January, the Crew kicked into high gear for the Jan. 24th outing.
Meet Up at the End of the Day
The focus was the same removing cut debris from the trail and carrying it about 50+ yards up to the fire road, but with a crew of 24 it was a lot easier and a lot more was accomplished! While some continued working on clearing recent storm damage, most of the crew formed a human chain to move the debris up to the road where it was stacked for later chipping.
Before lunch the target area had been cleared and we were able to move on to phase two which included cutting back vegetation along the trail edge. The work created more debris to be moved, but in much smaller volumes so we were able to keep up with the work.
There is another 1 to 1.5 days of effort left below the fire road before we resume working on the uphill side which will eventually take us to Buzzard Roost (but that is a long ways off!)
The crew put in 188 hours and thanks to Guy Albertelli, Fremont Bainbridge, Daryn Bieri, Jim Brooks, Rory Brooks, John Collins, Dale Elliott, Laurel Enders, Andrew Fiatal, Peter Gelblum, Evan Hughes, Andrea Lee, Janie Leifhelm, Bill Lock, Jack Marshall, Joe Mitchell, Mike Peasland, Devdutt Sheth, Brian Washburn, Bruce Washburn, Kris Kiefer-Woolery, and newcomers Max Green, Sam Spinner and Gina Valderrama, for making it a productive workday.
Hermit Thrush and Banana Slug
by Mike and Jeff
photos by Bruce, Daryn, and Mike
Now for Something Completely Different
For every successful trail reopening, there can sometimes be setbacks.
Shortly before Thanksgiving the park opened Hollow Tree Trail which was the last trail linking the basin floor to Middle Ridge Fire Rd after the 2020 fires. The work was a two year effort by the SC Mtns Trail Stewardship's professional crew on the 2.9 mile stretch of trail that included clearing regrowth since the fire, re-aligning sections of trail and building foot bridges. As standard practice for new bridges, they also removed nearby hazard trees that could damage the new structure if they fell.
But redwoods have a special place at Big Basin, so a large redwood was left in place near one of the new bridges.
Unfortunately the heavy rains and wind over the end of year holidays took their toll on one of the redwoods and it came down, likely due to saturated soil and wind, destroying one of the new bridges.
The section of Hollow Tree from Skyline-to-Sea to Middle Ridge Fire Rd is again closed to visitors until repairs are made.