When the Trail Crew began post fire work on Sequoia Trail back in mid-January the initial destination was the Huckleberry Campground which Big Basin hopes to reopen in mid-2025 as the first in park camping area for visitors. (It will be dry camping as no water is available in the park yet.)

The Sept. 7th workday brought our Sequoia Trail work close enough to Semperviren Falls that we were able to attack it from two different directions: Heading uphill from the basin floor as we've been doing for the past eight months and jumping ahead to the staircase that connects the falls to the trail and somehow survived the 2020 CZU fires.  

The 24th was an unusual Saturday in August for Boulder Creek in that there were puddles on the road from an unseasonal sprinkle of rain during the night.  It was a nice cool respite from the previous workday that spiked to 100F after lunch.  

The start of August marks the dog days of summer and the Trail Crew's first workday of the month on the 10th was appropriately warm, OK hot! We resumed work on Sequoia Trail less than five minutes from Sempervirens Falls and picked up where we left off in July. Half the crew continued the detail work on the previous workday's effort while the remainder of the crew plunged ahead to turn a very rough cut trail into something resembling a hiking trail. 

We had a break in the heat for our Saturday workday. The heavy fog rolling in from the coast caused a misting rain to settle on our cars at the Blooms Creek Campground parking lot while we waited for the rest of the crew to arrive.

Since the CZU fires in 2020, we've watched the Ceanothus grow taller and thicker every season and wondered what impact it would have on future workdays. The short answer is to make the work even more difficult!  The Trail Crew's July 13th workday brought us to the stretch of Sequoia Trail between the old Wastahi Campground and Semperviren Falls and thickest Ceanothus we've encountered to date.

The June 29th workday was our first hot one of the summer, but fortunately it fell on what we decided would be a half workday due to the 'Art in the Park' special event. We also switched to our earlier summer start time which meant more time in the cool morning hours, so overall not too bad.

The Trail Crew's June 15th workday was a continuation of earlier work as we returned to the Sequoia Trail near the old Wastahi Campground on Sky Meadow Rd. The previous workday we had completed the initial rough cut that left us with a narrow corridor that resembled a game trail at best, so the goal this time was to expand on it by clearing the trail shoulder on both sides and then trimming the 6-8 foot high surrounding Ceanothus so it wasn't tall enough to droop onto the trail. 

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!