Trail clearing

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Treehouser
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I spent yesterday out in the mountains clearing some trail. It was suppose to be a 2 day trip but I returned home late last night. I left the pickup yesterday morning at 8am. It's a 2 hours drive from the house and while I would have liked to have gotten an earlier start I didn't feel like getting up real early. I had already hiked the first 4 miles of trail so I knew what kind of work it needed, not much. I grabbed an axe instead of a chainsaw for this section to avoid having to pack a saw 8 miles. At the end of the 4 miles is a cabin and at the cabin is a chainsaw, I would use it for the rest of the trail. It has been at least a year since I hiked the second section of trail and I didn't remember it being terribly bad but I do remember a lot of brush. On this day I was only worried about getting any downfall out of the trail and hopefully I would have enough time to rebuild a short section of trail once I reached my pulaski. I had stashed it along the trail this spring after having rebuilt a couple places that had washed out in the bottom 5 mile stretch.

So off I go, mostly small trees laying over the trail, one pine about 14" diameter and a grand fir that had broke off and stuck straight up and down in the trail. The creek in the bottom of the canyon is running too high to wade across but there is a log to walk on. I let Buddy (my dog) go first. It always makes me nervous when he crosses on the log because I saw him fall of it when the water was low one year. In high water he might drown. There isn't a lot of water but the creek bottom is so steep it runs super fast. My fears were realized within the first 8 feet of crossing, he fell off... Luckily he hadn't gotten out far enough to be swept away. He came back and being very careful he successfully tiptoed across. Did I mention he is 14 years old, we've been doing this for a long time but he is really slowing down.

About a half mile below the creek crossing we reach the cabin and I dig out a Stihl 024, just the right size for packing. From here down to my pulaski is about 2.5 miles. There are two other creek crossing and I don't know if there will be logs to cross on or not. At this point I also put on my snake chaps. I don't expect to find and rattlesnake at the elevation that I'm at but I will be dropping fast and the Hells Canyon area is full of snakes. This lower section of trail turned out easier than I thought, I only burned one tank of gas. The next creek crossing was a good one. There was a large spruce across the creek and we both made it, no problem. The lower creek crossing turned out to be worse than I remembered it being. The high water had changed the crossing and even the log that was across the creek didn't look safe. I called it quits right here, no sense in everyone spending a bunch of time trying to find my floating corpse in the Snake River. We watered up here and headed back up to the cabin.

Once I reached the cabin I laid down and took a nap. After my nap I had dinner and while resting and reading a book I decided to go ahead and walk out instead of staying the night. It was only 5:30 and if I'm feeling good I can make the hike out in about 1 hour and 45 minutes. There is a 2300 foot elevation difference between here and pickup and a 4000 foot elevation difference between the lower creek crossing that I turned back at and the pickup. I was pretty tired so I figured on a couple hour hike. It was nice hike out, the weather was beautiful and it was starting to cool off for the evening.

It was a good outing. The pictures I post should fill in the story gaps.

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  • #6
The last time I was down there I took my waist belt off my pack and put it around his chest. Then I tied it to his collar and gave him a long leash. Luckily we didn't have to use it... but ya, I think it's a good idea. We had above normal snow pack this year and it's still melting off in the high country. One of these days the creeks should settle down a bit.
 
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  • #12
It's not good that you know to much...

Just kidding, that just made me think of something else. The trails are forest service trails. The old cabin sits on some private property completed surrounded by national forest and the only access is by trail, non motorized. The owner is paying me to do the trail work so he can access the property on horseback. Snow blocks access to the property from the top until about mid June but it's only about a 4 mile trip from the trailhead and this portion of trail is in really good shape. The lower access is in poor shape and there are 3 creek crossings, rattlesnakes in the summer and it's about 8 miles. The snow has usually melted off here by the first of April and he wants to be able to access it earlier in the year.
 
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  • #13
Two winters ago I snowshoed in from the bottom. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I reached the cabin. It was getting late in the day and even though it was hard work breaking trail on the snowshoes I was starting to get cold. A night outside the cabin would have been my last.

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  • #17
A few more pictures of this country. The 3rd picture was taken 3 weeks ago and was taken from the same place as the first picture in this thread. There was a lot of snow 3 weeks ago. I made sure to get up bright and early on my return trip so I could walk on top the snow. Rotten snow is no fun to try to walk on...

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Thanks for the explanation.

Sorry if I seemed like I was prying, I was just curios.

Dad worked for the Forest Service one summer outside Augusta Montana. A big flood came through and they spent summer rebuilding trails. That would have been 61 or 62.

I thought it might have been something like that.
 
Beautiful country.

I would be frozen by fear on a bridge like that.:coldcold:
Too bad the trees are in such a bade shape, many dead , dying or wounded. I guess that the weather isn't kind with them, but it doesn't seem to evolve in a good way.
 
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  • #24
No problem Jim. A lot of our national forest trails get very little, if any, attention from the forest service. I've done volunteer maintenance for several years. I find it enjoyable work.

Squisher, Some years I find several. It really depends on the people. With elk antlers being worth $14/lb it seems like every man and his dog are out chasing the elk around. This is pretty rough country though and I see very few people that will hike into here more than once.

Marc, wildfire is pretty common in this country. I would guess that most of the unhealthy trees you are seeing is a result of that.
 
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