Trail Work Thread

Back in the 70's I worked trail in the Pacific Northwest over four seasons. It was a great experience. Having done this gives me cred with trail workers that I meet nowadays in the Sierra. these guys eat way, way better than I did back in the day. (But our group bid for work as contractors for the state, so we had to provide our own food and tools, etc.) Anyway, I've been invited for meals on occasion by trail workers and it's great! Salad, are you kidding me? and good company.

I do notice that trail workers tend to go feral–in a good way. You just get so used to being in the woods that past a certain point you lose your taste for t.v., traffic, noise, etc. I remember feeling that way and then watching myself re-acquire the taste for civilization with more than a tinge of regret. I think that I mostly missed the silence and the lack of distractions that kept me in a slowed down but entirely filled time frame. Never bored, even though I couldn't watch t.v. etc.

First of all, "Thank you for your service!" I always say thanks when I meet workers along the trail because I am so aware of how very very much tougher and shorter my hikes would be if not for all hard, dusty, mosquito-infested work down by others over the decades. I live in Kenai and hike in Chugach SP at times, so I say "Thanks" for very literally helping me take the hikes I love.

About every fourth time down a local, I'll have inventoried the alder over-growth and blow downs and then plan a slower-paced tree-trimming hike. I'll bring a folding saw (I make some 11 grams UL wood saws, but for an hour of work, I'll bring a professional-quality pruning saw for the alders). Also, the pruning saw trims the branches on blowdown making them more passable until I get back with a chainsaw. Less often, I'll pack in the chainsaw and clear the dead fall. It is surprisingly draining to scramble through a tangle of stiff, dry, pokey spruce branches or to detour 40 feet around a blow down. And then do it another 40 times on the trail. The hike out is gratifyingly easier on a cleared path than the hike in was.

Hey Joe, I am also a trail worker. I work on the trail crew at Mount Rainier, my second season is coming up. I did two years in Washington Conservation Corps a few years ago, one was trail crew at Olympic. I was wondering if anyone else here works trails.

I have been on trail crew. Pulaski to make new trail.

I pretty much always do a little throwing branches off trail. I don't care if there's one branch that can be stepped over without altering pace, but if there's a tangle, I'll throw them off. I'll spend a couple hours over a few day backpack.

Maybe one in four trips I'll bring folding saw and also cut branches that are across trail. Maybe spend a little more time.

Partly, I figure if I can do easy stuff, when real trail crew goes through, they can spend their time on more difficult stuff.

Cut things off three feet from center of trail. Throw at least 6 feet off trail, on downhill side.

A very good longtime friend and I "own" maintenance rights to nine miles of the Superior Hiking Trail.

It typically takes two full days to give it a clean sweep. There's a campsite conveniently at the midpoint so we make a backpacking weekend of it. The commitment is once in spring b4 the end of May and again in fall by the end of September.

Just one downside … I can't seem to walk down a trail without evaluating its maintenance status!

Good thread. My first outdoor job was on trail crew at Saguaro NP (summer ,57). That was all the Kool-Aid I needed to start an outdoor career in the NPS. I still take time to do brush trimming or tread repair – time well spent.

I led portage clearing trips, in conjunction with the Mn Canoe Assoc and USFS, in the BWCA for 11 years. Got to see a lot of the BWCA in early May with virtually no one around but our crew. A lot of work but also rewarding and fun.

David:
Hopefully I will see you out on the trails in the park! We'll have a small crew out working all summer.

Jonathan:
When does your season start in Rainer? What kind of projects do ya'll have planned for this year? I've had some close friends work for WCC and they've all loved it. They worked out of Issaquah.

Don:
I bet the work was a lot heartier in 57. I feel like I was born in the wrong generation sometimes. Today one of a trail crew Leader's biggest challenges is getting members to "disconnect". I'm curious if on your crew people struggled to let go of their "city lives" or if people embraced the grit?

Anybody any sweet project pictures? Here is a bridge/turnpike project as it was being built. This was in Canaan Valley SP in West Virginia.

Joe, IDK, hopefully early May. As for projects it depends, there is a big three-year trail regrade project we started last year at Paradise, IDK yet if I'll be working on that again or not, probably will be. We can't start there again until the snow melts enough and that isn't until sometime in July. I guess there was some flooding in November, so I'm hoping they'll be some cool bridge work.

WCC is great, I wish more states had programs like it.

Joe do state parks only hire AK residents?

I'll look for pictures, I never take enough, I plan on taking more this year and some video. I'd like to get some of hazard tree felling if I can.

In 1980 I was a professional trail builder with Bell Brothers Trail Builders.We were paid $12.90/hour, a lot in 1980. I worked the 9 mile Snow Creek section of the PCT BUILDING THE TRAIL FROM SCRATCH. It was near Wildwood, CA one mountain north of Palm Springs.

We lived in our tents, cooked breakfast and dinner on camp stoves (like my SVEA 123) and carried all our lunch and a day's water (5 quarts) down the trail every day. About every 10 days we'd go to town (LA for me) for two days of rest and to re-supply our food.

Pulling tread with picks, shovels and bars (for rocks) was our lot. I often also used a gas-powered Swedish drill to make 4 ft. deep holes to place our proprietary ammonium nitrate explosives & blasting caps. Got hit with some rock shards once in a while (but not in the head. :o)

My boss and I nearly got buried in a boulder slide while blasting along a cliff. BARELY made it to safety. He just kept repeating "J.C. that could have been Christmas! J.C. that could have been Christmas!" I figured we had just the worst that would happen so I decided to finish out the summer.

Rattlesnakes were seen sunning on our new trail every morning as we walked to work. I was 38 then and full of pi$$ and vinegar, having just been a Nordic Olympic ski patroller that winter at Lake Placid.

When I got back to Pennsylvania to return to teaching high school after 2 1/2 months of trail building I was one tough guy. Then I had to turn around and begin building a new XC ski trail on weekends!

Eric when I hiked that section in 2013 my jaw dropped at the amount of rock work done to make the trail. You guys are amazing!

I'm a volunteer trail worker on an 800 mile trail. My preferred work is clearing deadfall Ponderosa pine trees in a nearby wilderness area. The best times are using a crosscut saw and figuring out how to use gravity to help get the tree off of the trail. The worst part is clearing a big one, then having its sister fall down the next year. I joke about the family having a reunion on the ground. It makes sense that there would be a grove of big trees where the conditions are best, not trees at random locations.

I've spent a two half days sawing solo on one tree. I moved to others after lunch just to make me feel like I was accomplishing more.

I like clearing trail, there is no need for someone else to pass inspection on my work. It is obvious when the tree is gone and the corridor is open again.

I was in the YCC back in the 70's. We built the Shawnee Backpack Trail in Ohio. Until a few years ago I volunteered at a local Metropark, helping to clear trails in the spring and after major storms. An increasing intolerance for poison ivy and back problems have caused me to give that up.

These days I help with litter pickups, we call it ditchpigging. I also use my canoe to do river cleanups.

I am a volunteer co-Trail Captain of part of a side trail on the Bruce Trail.

Minimum commitment of getting out 4X/year (per season, basically). We blaze, cut trees (big trees requiring chainsaw have special crews come out), trim back growth, that sort of thing.

I'm not physically up to actual trail-building at this point. But I do pack out a trash bag full of other people's crap pretty much any time I hit the trails. That's gotta count for something, right?

"But I do pack out a trash bag full of other people's crap pretty much any time I hit the trails. That's gotta count for something, right?"

It most certainly does. It counts a lot!

I signed up and took part in their training to become a Volunteer Wilderness Ranger for Los Paders Forest Assoc. just before retiring from 34 years in the fire service a couple of years ago. We do trail maintenance in the Los Padres National Forest, with my group working primarily in the San Raphael and Dick Smith Wilderness. I'm also an instructor for our six week course in the fundamentals of Back Packing and, we hold free to the public, seminars and have fund raisers to provide money to offset the cost of trail maintenance in the forest.

I find it to be a very rewarding experience to give back and, to help my fellow hikers enjoy the forest and my passion of being on the trails.

I also volunteer on various projects in and around Los Padres National Forest with the LPFA, SB Trails Council, etc.

I originally got exposed and hooked on trail work helping on some projects in New Zealand about 10 years ago. I really enjoyed the work and found it to be personally rewarding. I don't think I'm ready to make a career out of it, but for someone stuck at a desk for most of any given week, the opportunity to complete physically demanding labor (and work outdoors) is really satisfying in its own way.

Lately I've been mostly doing brushing/clearing of trails, some of which have long been unmaintained or neglected. There's been a lot of clearing from the aftermath of wildland fires too. Seems we have no shortage of such projects around here, considering the effects of several years of back-to-back fires that scorched much of our local backcountry. Each winter a new batch of burnt out trees falls across the trails; each spring groups work to clear them (usually with cross cut saws since most are located within federally-designated Wilderness). There's probably a few more years of this cycle to come for select areas.

Anyone read the book Dirt Work by Christine Byl? I read it recently, her writing style isn't quite for me but I still enjoyed the book. It's the only book I know of that exists on trails besides manuals.

Nico, chainsaws can be used in federally designed wilderness areas, the NPS uses them but the FS doesn't in wilderness areas.

FS will use chainsaws in wilderness after a fire

I think if they can't afford to clear trails otherwise, they should be allowed to use chainsaws in wilderness

I always do minor trail work – throwing branches off trail, cutting branches with my folding saw. I figure if I do what I can, when a crew comes through they will be better able to do big stuff.

It's up to the individual District Ranger as to whether or not to allow mechanized equipment (i.e. chainsaws) under special circumstances for trail work, etc in Wilderness areas. The District Ranger must make a specific determination that allows for their use in limited, defined circumstances (like post wildland fire).

Unfortunately, our local District ranger has not been willing to grant these allowances to date. Thus our local volunteer groups have been limited to cross cut saws within the Wilderness boundaries.

If they made an exception once per year, or once every few years after a winter with lots of tree fall, I would be okay with it.

Probably be better to hire enough people to use non mechanized tools, but actually, they're only allowed by exception also. As are bridges and trails.

I did trail work before.
One day, I will do it again.

I dont want to gather rocks again though.