Heading into our June 17th workday the forecast called for temperatures in the low 70's which would have been nice for mid-June, but by lunch the Saddle Mountain weather station said it was already 82, and headed towards 85, while we worked in direct sunlight on a south facing hillside with little shade before deciding to call it a day at mid-afternoon.

June 3rd was not only a regularly scheduled Trail Crew workday, but also the annual National Trails Day that involves parks and open spaces across the country organizing one day volunteer trail maintenance and construction events. 

After almost three years of regrowth since the CZU fires in 2020, even working along an existing trail corridor can be challenge and it becomes even more difficult when doing a trail reroute like the May 20th work on Creeping Forest. Park staff is taking the opportunity to improve the trails by moving sections out of low lying areas that can become wet and muddy in the winter and our challenge was to move a 400 ft section of Creeping Forest.

Spring is always a season of transition, with one foot edging towards summer while the other is still firmly planted in winter. After the April 22nd workday in the mid-80's that we were definitely not ready for, our May 6th outing was much more suited to trail work with the Saddle Mtn weather station topping out at perfect 60 degree conditions. 

This  BBVTC workday included several things of note -  it happened to be Earth Day, we had a warm (too warm) spring like workday after four months of cold, wet, windy weather, and the District trail crew dropped off a new piece of equipment.

Things went well on Saturday, and 23 people show up for the APR 8 workday. Rory and I (Chris Young) managed to get the choke knob that Mike provided on the hedger-on-a-stick just before 9 am.  Jeanette and Jim took care of getting people signed in and I confirmed with Kile and Sam that we would be continuing work on Creeping Forest.

Each spring State Parks hosts a California Trails and Greenways Conference for trail professionals At the 2023 conference held in the last week of March the Santa Cruz District and Big Basin Volunteer Trail Crews were recognized for their work in preparing the trails for the park's reopening last July.

Despite the official arrival of spring early in the week, another in a winter long series atmospheric river storms brought the usual down trees, down power lines and road closures, to the Santa Cruz Mountains just days before our March 25th workday. The only hopeful outlook was Caltrans and PG&E had three days to complete their work, but 24 hours before our workday the road into Big Basin was still closed.

This year's series of wind and rain related issues impacting our workdays was upped a notch for the Feb. 25th workday with enough snow dumped on the Santa Cruz mountains the day before to create chaos on pretty much every road leading to Big Basin. 

Big Basin continues its recovery from the heavy rainfall that pounded the area the first three weeks of the year with the highway running through the park reopening to through traffic the day before our Feb. 11th workday and the park now scheduled to reopen to the public on Feb. 21st though only the Redwood Loop Trail (RWL) will initially be accessible.