“Switchback"
turn, turn,
and again,
hard scrabble
steep travel
ahead.
― Gary Snyder, The Back Country
So the only question I get asked more than "how did you get that job" is "what do you do." In general that what a lot of this blog is about. We have a four person trail crew and they handle the bigger trail projects but the rangers do light maintenance too. There's lots that can happen to the trail. Drainage ditches (a little dip that directs water across the trail) and water bars (same idea but instead of a ditch it's a series of rock that run across the trail) get plugged with duff and need to be cleared or else the water might run down the trail. Brush grows in and needs to be cleared. Trees fall blocking the trail. Slough builds up and pushes the trail over. There's a lot more but these are the ones I've dealt with so far this season.
So the only question I get asked more than "how did you get that job" is "what do you do." In general that what a lot of this blog is about. We have a four person trail crew and they handle the bigger trail projects but the rangers do light maintenance too. There's lots that can happen to the trail. Drainage ditches (a little dip that directs water across the trail) and water bars (same idea but instead of a ditch it's a series of rock that run across the trail) get plugged with duff and need to be cleared or else the water might run down the trail. Brush grows in and needs to be cleared. Trees fall blocking the trail. Slough builds up and pushes the trail over. There's a lot more but these are the ones I've dealt with so far this season.
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| oh no a tree in the trail! |
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| a little sawing and it's all clear! |
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| This one we had to pull the root end of the tree a bit to get it safely down from being hung up on some other trees. |
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| People were cutting around the trail here so we tossed some logs (right side of photo) in the trail people had made to try and keep them on the real trail. |
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| One of my favorite tools is the folding saw. It flips into itself so it's very portable and great for clearing the brushy ladder fuel that gets in the trail's way. Notice how the tree to the right of it does not have any branches sticking into the trail because we cut them out. |
