For days before the August 8th workday there had been Bay Area wide heat wave warnings and our current effort on Pine Mtn Trail heading towards Buzzards Roost does not provide a lot of shade, but we still had a crew of 17 that was up to the challenge!
We began the day a little earlier than usual to take advantage of the cooler morning hours, but the air temperature still made it into the upper 80's during our time on the trail, which meant that it felt like it was well into the 90's especially in the sun.
Accessing the upper section of trail from the fire road has required ducking or crawling under several large trees left in place for later work. So, we began the day by setting up a handline rope down a keyhole that allowed us to walk/slide down the hillside connecting the fire road and trail. With adding the handline, we were able to drive further up the road and bring people and equipment closer to the trail work area.
Once on site, the work itself focused on opening up the trail edge shoulders after the initial clearing work two weeks ago. The debris cut from the shoulders was moved to an off trail hiding location down the trail while a chainsaw sawyer cleared dense, dry fallen trees from new sections of trail to push our progress further along. And a slide down required a climb out.
The crew put in 127 hours and thanks to Fremont Bainbridge, Aiden Bowers, Jeff Bowers, John Collins, Peter Gelblum, Tommy Ha, Janie Leifhelm, Bill Locke, Jack Marshall, Salome Navarette, Aaron Shaw, Marc Shaw, Eric Voelkel, Kris Kiefer-Woolery, Chris Young, Daniel Zichuhr, and David Payne who was doing his trail volunteer work for an upcoming trail run.
by Chris, Mike, and Jeff
photos by John and Kris