Despite the inclement weather, however, work in Olympic went on, and my crew and I have been fleshing out a reroute of the Hoh River trail. One of the most popular jaunts in the park, the trail features a meandering route along the riverside and offers spectacular views of glaciated Mt. Carrie. If you'll recall from an earlier post of mine (when I visited this spot on my own) the trail is a bit dicey at the moment, and two different washouts completely took out two parts of the trail.
Soooo, what one park ranger called "legendary", and another 15 year trail crew vet labeled as "something they're going to put in brochures in Europe", is the subject of this post. The proposed reroute took a whole lot of work (the majority of which was done before we got there), blazing through bedrock, mushy mud, and giant piles of duff (organic material on the forest floor that is too unstable to build on, and so must be moved).
Below is a video of the old trail... the one that washed out...
I originally had a video of the new trail here, but it was all dark and grainy... (they really degrade the quality of your uploads on Blogger...)
But so anyway, this post is basically to give you a day in the life of trail work.
First, we get up around 6:15ish, make breakfast, get dressed, strap on the boots, and grab our gear for the day (on the first and last days anyway... we leave it at our work site during the middle of the week, lest we schlep it around every day). Our site for the past three weeks, the reroute, is a little less than three miles up the trail head. So, we stumble from our bunkhouse in to the woods and are met by the glacier fed river...
It's super pretty in the morning when the sun is out.
And we get to meet all sorts of critters.
The elk are known to charge people, so when one stands in the middle of our way, we kind just have to wait it out...
This dude hung out for a couple minutes... didn't pay us any mind.
This was along the old trail... the route used to be over and around this tree stump that is now completely on its side.
This pile of duff was literally 5 feet high, and we had to shovel it... and shovel it... and shovel it...
We do get break though, and often find ourselves wandering to the prettier spots.
This was the portion of the bedrock that some guys had to jack hammer (yes, they hauled a gas powered jack hammer three miles in to the woods) through... then they grip hoisted a giant log (you can see it on the left) to act as a support for the outer edge of the trail that climbed up the face of the rocky hill... from the far end of that picture to the very forefront its probly a 20 foot incline.
Scratching out the new trail to connect with the old one... this was the easy part, until you hit a root.
For the mushy parts we construct wooden boxes, or, "turnpikes". You dig out the mush, frame the boxes, fill them in with rocks (that you cannot take from the river because of rules enforced by the Natural Resources Department), and then cover that with fresh dirt.
The wood we get from the forest -- going on cedar runs is a whole lot of fun... you get a break from swinging an axe, you get to bushwhack through the lushest of rain forests, and then rip through a fallen cedar tree (the smell of fresh cedar is really amazing) -- and the rocks and dirt
from the side of the hill.
The wood we get from the forest -- going on cedar runs is a whole lot of fun... you get a break from swinging an axe, you get to bushwhack through the lushest of rain forests, and then rip through a fallen cedar tree (the smell of fresh cedar is really amazing) -- and the rocks and dirt
from the side of the hill.
Then once the new trail is shored up and almost ready to go, we have to cover up the old one... so we plant some ferns and toss some brush.
This was my duty for one of the days... dig out this giant stump from the middle of the trail. Now it doesn't look impressive in stature from this picture... but it was a doubler, and it wouldn't budge. You can't just chainsaw it because you'll screw your chain up by hittin' the dirt, and worst of all rocks. So... I spend a good chunk of time just digging all around this Medusa's head until I revealed enough of the roots to then cut the heck out of it.
Probably a little more than you needed to hear about a stump... right?
Probably a little more than you needed to hear about a stump... right?
And when we're done for the day, we pack or belongings, hike back to the bunkhouse, and serve up some supper.
And then sit on the porch.
And then chop some wood...
...for the nice warm fire...
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