Most Trail Crew workdays provide a sense of achievement as we begin the day with no sign of a trail anywhere thanks to the dense vegetation regrowth since the 2020 fires and by the end there is a walkable path through the forest that did not exist just hours before.  Our most recent workday was not one of those days.

The BBVTC's May 18th workday brought us to the end of the line in our initial effort on the Sequoia Trail, which in the pre-fire days was one of the most popular trails for Big Basin visitors. Beginning the work in mid-January, the initial goal was to rough cut the trail to the old Huckleberry Campground area, which park staff wants to reopen to visitor camping in spring-summer 2025, but just before the 18th we received updated instructions saying push-on to Wastahi!

Over the past year we've become accustomed to encountering increasingly dense vegetative regrowth, but the work on Sequoia is the thickest we've experienced as it sometimes requires getting down on hands and knees to determine the trail alignment we should be clearing. Over the past year we've become accustomed to encountering increasingly dense vegetative regrowth, but the work on Sequoia is the thickest we've experienced as it sometimes requires getting down on hands and knees to determine the trail alignment we should be clearing.

Since the Trail Crew began its post fire work in Big Basin, a standard workday has been to clear brush from a trail corridor, deposit it into burn piles and then repeat the process over and over and over again. Having to build burn piles slows progress as sites need to be identified and cleared, debris needs to be carried to the location and then assembled into a burn pile like a giant jigsaw puzzle. On a good day only about 150 yards of trail could be cleared, but the April 6th workday brought about a BIG change!

With almost four years since the CZU fires of 2020 vegetative regrowth is becoming more prolific, making it sometimes difficult to lay out trail routes for clearing. Especially when a reroute takes us away from the old trail corridor.  

The Crew's March 9th workday was our second day of realignment work on Sequoia Trail as we cut the corner on the hillside above the Hwy 236 - Sky Meadow intersection and although trail and off trail areas burned equally during the 2020 fires, off trail areas create unique challenges.

The Trail Crew's Feb. 24th workday was one of those false spring days with temps hitting 70 after lunch, but a nice break from what has been a wet 2024 so far. (By the following weekend, winter had returned with rain, afternoon temps in the mid-40's and the park closed for several days because of wind.) 

Prior to the CZU fires in 2020, winter was the Trail Crew's busy time of year as we worked to clear down trees from trails after storms and keep them open for park visitors. Our Feb. 10th workday was a throwback to that era as a series of atmospheric river storms brought rain and high winds to the Santa Cruz Mountains, closed the park for most of the previous week, and felled a huge redwood that fell across Hwy 236 and into the Jay Camp parking area, damaging the lot gate in the process.

After a good turnout for our Jan. 13th workday to start the new year, we had an even bigger crew on Jan. 27th with 26 coming out! The day got off to a slow start as there were no burn pile locations identified or cleared, so that part of the day took about an hour to get up and running, but a couple of sawyers pushed forward rough cutting the next stretch of Sequoia Trail.

The weather forecast for the first workday of 2024 called for rain, but despite the prediction 23 crew members showed up to kick off the new year. And for the first time since we resumed post-fire work in Big Basin in late 2021, we were on the 'other' (old HQ) side of Hwy 236.