The Trail Crew entered its Feb. 21st workday with one goal in mind, but several potential challenges were standing in the way.
Since mid-November we had become bogged down with final detail work in the section of trail below Pine Mtn Fire Rd. The slow progress was partly due to the Thanksgiving and end of year Holidays, but regardless we really wanted to complete the work and move on to the next section of trail.
But in the days leading up to Feb. 21st, heavy rain (more than six inches at the Saddle Mtn entrance to the park) and wind created the potential for storm damage cleanup in addition to the planned work. The rains had stopped by the workday, but the forecast was for wind gusts in the mid-20's mph. The winds created the potential for a short workday if they presented a safety hazard from all the standing dead trees after the 2020 fires.
Despite the soggy work conditions, we had a crew of 23 and the day went better than expected with only minor storm cleanup on the hike into the work area. The wind gusts didn't reach the double digit mark until about lunch and were only in the mid-teens by mid-afternoon.
Lunch
Most of the morning revolved around completing the final detail work and moving the debris to burn pile locations and by late morning some of the crew moved across the road to begin work on the next section and were joined by the remainder of the crew after lunch.
As we move higher on the trail we've begun to encounter a mix of the usual post-fire Ceanothus green vegetation along with more woody debris, but fortunately the afternoon work was still close enough to the fire road that we could continue stacking debris along the road edge for later chipping.
The crew put in 162 hours and thanks to Fremont Bainbridge, Aiden Bowers, Jeff Bowers, Jim Brooks, Rory Brooks, Karen Cheeniyil, Santhosh Cheeniyil, Andrew Fiatal, Tommy Ha, Andrea Lee, Janie Leifhelm, Bill Lock, Jack Marshall, John Martin, Joe Mitchell, Thanh Nguyen, Mike Peasland, Eric Voelkel, Brian Washburn, Bruce Washburn, Kris Kiefer-Woolery, Chris Young and Daniel Zichuhr, for helping with what turned out to be a good workday.
by Mike and Jeff
photos by Bruce, Jack, and Mike