Clearing Big Basin trails of post-fire regrowth has become more of a challenge the past 12-18 months as we encounter increasingly dense thickets of vegetation where the trail should be. Or where we 'think' the trail should be. And sometimes we just take a guess and hope for the best.
Morning Briefing
The June 13th workday presented such a situation when we had two options for moving forward. The first was to clear a stretch of trail that was heavily overgrown and looked like it might be a drainage and the other was a section that mostly aligned with already cleared trail. Not wanting to mistakenly clear a drainage and damage water flow we chose the second option.
Afterwards we checked with the District trail crew and there was no drainage in the area. It was where the trail was supposed to go. Our flawed analysis became known as the 'Oops' and we set out to resolve it on the June 27th workday. On the hike in from the fire road we stopped to remove a down Tan oak we had become tired to climbing over, but correcting our earlier error was the primary focus.
The work appeared mostly straight forward. Clear vegetation from the correct section of trail and use the debris to cover the area we had mistakenly cleared. It took a while to determine the correct alignment, remove the thicket of vegetation and chainsaw out a Doug fir that was blocking the trail, but in the end we were back on track.
Wrong path then corrected to open the section (left to right)
Others meanwhile continued final trail edge clearing so we would be able to resume opening new sections of trail next workday.
Hike and Drive out at the End of the Day
The crew put in 169 hours and thanks to Fremont Bainbridge, Jim Brooks, Rory Brooks, Karen Cheeniyil, Santhosh Cheeniyil, Dan Chen, John Collins, Tom Condy, Drew Granzella, Vlad Kuznetsov, Janie Leifhelm, Bill Lock, John Martin, Mike Peasland, Eric Voelkel, Kris Keifer-Woolery, Chris Young, Jill Zeng, Daniel Zichuhr, and newcomers Davin Chan, Nitya Ramanan, Ainhoa Bezerra and Jack Love, for their support as always.
Berry Creek Falls (Watercolor by Bruce Washburn 2026)
by Mike and Jeff
photos by Bruce, Mike, and Tom