Hiking Out

Hiking back out to the Pete Lake trailhead, and getting
a little work done along the way....

Our last night on the trail was bittersweet. The next day, we'd all be splitting up, heading to the four corners of the state. I decided to dress up our last night by wearing a tie, but nobody else felt it necessary to dress up. Have you ever walked into room with what looks like a bunch of homeless people while wearing a tie? Yep, that's what I did. =)

When I passed by Gary's tent, he waved me in closer.

"Do you know anything about that tree by the avalanche chute?"

"You mean that one that fell during the night?"

"Yeah, that one."

I rubbed my chin, trying to decide if I should fess up. "Yes, I might know something about that," I told him. =)

"I thought you might. We were a bit perplexed when we got down and it was already gone!"

This stream used to go down about 30
feet of trail, but I scratched out a path
to shorten that to about 10 feet. The 20
feet of trail past this point is still wet
where the water used to run, but it'll dry...

I didn't ask how he knew it was me--I assumed he figured it out from a process of elimination. There weren't many people who had the tools and opportunity to have done the work, but it made me smile to imagine them trying to figure out how the tree managed to cut itself out of the way. =) Gary thanked me for the unexpected help and I moseyed along.

Ken scouted the PCT to the south and found three more fallen trees on our side of a washed-out bridge, trees that one team would cut out in the morning before we quit for the day.

I set up my tarp due to threatening-looking clouds, but by the time I went to sleep, the skies had cleared so I unhooked one-half of it and folded it back along the other half. If it did start raining during the night, it would be relatively easy for me to reattached the loose side.

It didn't rain, though, and I enjoyed the stars during the night.

The next day, we took our time getting up. One team set off to clear the PCT of the fallen trees to the south while the rest of us fixed up the trail back to the trailhead for Pete Lake. Most of the work everyone did was cutting back the vegetation, but I carried the grub-hoe this time and worked on water drainage issues. Along the Pete Lake trail, there were some big problems with water not draining properly off the trail. Some of the issues were far too big for one person to fix quickly--our goal was to get back to the trailhead by 1:00 in the afternoon. And since I had the only grub-hoe in our group, I couldn't really expect much help. Handsaws and cross-cut saws generally aren't suitable tools for digging water drains.

Everyone, including the team that was originally behind us to cut out the three logs across the PCT, managed to pass me while I played in the mud. In one place, water ran about 30 feet down the length of the trail before it drained off into a meadow. There wasn't an easy or quick fix for this problem. The trail was so worn, it fell several inches below the surrounding terrain. With enough time and effort, I could have dug out a drainage where the water could cross the trail without running down it, but I didn't have enough time for that. So instead, I found a low point where the water could almost get off the trail and dug out that section. The water still drained down about 10 feet of the trail, but that's still a big improvement over the 30 feet of trail it had been running across.

For this project, I couldn't get the water off
the trail in the short time I had to work,
so I pushed the water to the right side of the
trail so people could walk on the dry
left side.

Another area had water running down about 15 feet of trail, but I couldn't see any quick or easy fixes for that. The trail was just worn down too deep. So I made a quick temporary fix, pushing up a lot of the rocks and debris on one side of the trail to the other side of the trail. This gave the water a channel on one side to flow down the trail and a dry area where hikers could travel on the other side. Not ideal, and it's certainly not a permanent solution, but at least it'll make things marginally better for anyone hiking the busy trail.

So I dug water drains, in mud and rocks, trying to do what I could to keep water off the trail. The Pete Lake Trail is in bad shape--a WTA work party could spend a week fixing up the water drainage issues along this short section of trail. As busy as it was, I felt that more turnpikes really needed to be installed. And the trail was busy--extremely busy now that it was a weekend. I passed dozens of people, three groups of people riding horses, half a dozen dogs, and--most unexpectedly--two goats. I'd never seen anyone take their goats out for a walk before, and they were so adorable! The goats were in training to carry loads, but they weren't carrying anything this year. This year was about teaching them how to hike on trails, cross streams, and get comfortable with their surroundings. The next year, the owners told us, they'd start carrying loads.

I finally reached one of the biggest pools of water sitting on the trail and at a cursory glance, I thought I could make a big improvement here. The pool of water looked like it was a good three or four inches deep in the middle and it spanned the entire width of the trail. A saw large frogs swimming in the water. A small berm  on one side seemed to hold the water in place preventing it from draining downwards off the trail, and I thought if I could just knock enough of that berm down, most of the water would drain right off the trail. The deepest part in the middle probably wouldn't, but I wasn't looking to fix the problem--just make it a little less bad. If I could drain it enough so people could walk along the side of the trail, it would be a huge improvement. As it was now, an entirely new path was forming cutting the turn in the trail off completely.

I went to work with the grub-ho, splashing mud and water all over myself, and started seeing the water draining of the trail into the marshy area. I was quite proud of this, and stood up on a log nearby which when I noticed that there was water draining into the trail from the other side of the log. The level of the water in the pool wasn't going on at all--I'd just created a current that hadn't been there before.

My public works project....
... that failed. =(

It wasn't a fast current, but the water was coming from a stream that ran into this log--a solid wall that the water couldn't go through, and so the water did what water does--it drained around the log. The berm had trapped the water from draining on the trail side, so it pooled up then went around the other side of the log. Now that I cleared out the berm, the water was slowly going around both sides of the log now. I needed to block the channel where water was getting into the trail--but I didn't have the time to fashion a solution. Drats. My biggest earth-moving project on the trip came to a screeching failure.

I cut my losses and continued the hike out to the trailhead. I hiked fast, no longer doing any trail work at all, trying to catch up with the rest of the group, asking people hiking in the opposite direction how far ahead of me they were located. I only managed to catch up with Gary before I reached the trailhead, but I was glad that I wasn't bringing up the rear and had everyone waiting on me.

I didn't have a ride scheduled to get me home from this point. My plan was to hitch a ride from anyone heading towards Seattle, and Joanna offered to give me a ride to the Bellevue Park and Ride. Perfect! Had nobody been heading towards Seattle, I did have a Plan B: I'd spend the next two days hiking south on the PCT to Snoqualimie Pass where Amanda would pick me up. =) As much as I'd have loved to hike to Snoqualmie Pass, I didn't really have time--I needed to get a lot done before I left town for nearly four months in just a few more days! But I had brought two days of extra food.... just in case.

So we all said our goodbyes and headed our separate ways. I hopped into Joanna's vehicle, and she drove me to Bellevue, where I picked up a bus that took me into downtown Seattle, where I transferred to another bus that took me home to West Seattle.

In related news, please help support WTA trips like this one by sponsoring me for WTA's annual Hike-a-Thon!

Public art at the bus stop in Bellevue.

How to Cut Out Logs

I helped install this water bar in 2007.
The middle picture is how it looked
during my thru-hike of 2010.
And the bottom photo is how
it looks today. That jacket I'm wearing,
surprisingly, is the only piece of
gear I had during all three visits. =)

I sleep in late, throwing protective
clothing over me to keep
the mosquitoes away.

I slept in late this morning. In fact, I slept in late every morning on this work party since everyone decided to get started by around 7:00 while I generally woke up at least an hour before that. I tended to wake up with the sun, and the sun gets up pretty darned early in July. =)

So I snuggled comfortably in my sleeping bag and as the morning mosquitoes got going, I would throw a shirt or jacket over my head to keep them at bay. One of the downsides of camping without a tent!

Eventually, though, I actually got up and started moving. It was a beautiful morning too!

Each of the smaller teams left as they got ready, and I headed out with the rest of Team Buzzsaw passing a couple of teams that had already stopped to log out some trees blocking the path.

We passed on old water bar that I helped install back in 2007. It's easy to identify because it's the only water bar between Lemah Meadows and Solo Tarn, so I took photos of it to compare later with the photos back from 2007 and more that I took during my PCT thru-hike of 2010.

And finally we reached a couple of nice blowdowns just before an old avalanche shoot. In fact, I convinced Larry and Marcella to skip the one further back from the avalanche shoot and hit the one closer to it with the beautiful, wide-open views. When we finished with it, we could backtrack the 30 feet to the other blowdown. And anyhow, this one closer to the incredible views was significantly larger and would be more difficult to cut. If another team caught up to us before we finished and wanted to cut out the smaller blowdown, that was fine. But I wanted this one with the views. =)

View from the avalanche shoot.

A couple of days later, a park ranger--John--would meet up with our group and tell us a little about this avalanche shoot because he was working the area back when it happened. The small clearing, back in the day, used to be a vibrant, thriving forest until an avalanche punched through sometime in the early 1990s. Apparently, it left the trail quite a mess with hundreds of trees stacked and piled high. John said he's a little disappointed that you can't see the awesome destruction of the avalanche anymore. The trees have largely rotted and those that are left are covered with brush and vine maple that hide the incredible, destructive powers of the avalanche.  Many thought they'd need to get an exception to the "no chainsaws" rule in wilderness areas, but they sent a team out with cross-cut saws and it took them a solid week to clear the section of trail, not even a tenth of a mile long, through the rubble.

It's hard to imagine such powerful forces walking through the area now--so peaceful and tranquil. In fact, that avalanche shoot is one of the few incredible viewpoints along the lower edge of the slope we were now ascending. (Although, based on my 2007 WTA work party, I can attest that it's a lot more difficult to maintain since the tall trees no longer crowd out the small vegetable that likes to creep up onto the trail.)

We shed our packs, put on the required hard hat and gloves. Also required: a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and boots, but we already wore those on the hike up.

Step 1: Examine the tree and surroundings.

Logging out a tree is pretty simple in theory. Step one: we examine the blowdown. We walk around it noting stuff like if it's root ball is still attached to the ground (if it's not, it's much more likely to slide down a steep hill or roll over and hurt someone). We look up to see if there are any dangers overhead that might rain down on us as we do our work. We look for tension and compression on the tree to identify the best places to make our cuts. In areas of compression, the saws can (and do!) get stuck as the wood pinches the saw blades. Getting a saw stuck is a huge hassle--and if it's bad enough, it might even require us to get help from another team to saw out our own saw. So we want to avoid that.

So we all walk around the tree, looking for dangers and form a plan of attack.

Then we moved on to step two: cut away all of the small branches and stobs sticking out from the main trunk. They make logs hard to roll. Sometimes, this is a good thing when we want to make sure that a log doesn't roll onto one of us, but in this case, on the relatively flat terrain of this area, they would just get in our ways. So we took out our Corona handsaws and lopped all of those branches and stobs off.

Now we just had the big trunk blocking the trail, and we decided to cut it out with two cuts--one on each side of the trail. Larry worked on knocking off a lot of the bark with dirt at the cut. Dirt will clog and dull a sharp cross-cut saw faster than you can believe, so we already tried to "clean" the cut first by knocking off the bark where the dirt would be.

Step 2: Get rid of all the branches and stobs.

We also used loppers to cut down some of the vegetation near the cut. The loppers turned out to be incredible useful for this purpose over and over again. The vegetation would grow low, near the ground, where were were trying to cut and get in our way, so we'd lop it away to make room for our work.

And Marcella took the honors of doing the cut with the cross-cut saw. In hindsight, it probably would have been easier had we put handles on both ends of the cross-cut saw and had two people saw, but we didn't and suffered as a result. The log was suspended over the trail meaning that the compression was on top of the log, and sure enough, the saw started binding as it got deeper into the cut. Eventually, we started underbucking--which is absolutely exhausting and not fun at all. With a cross-cut saw, the bulk of the effort goes into pushing the saw back and forth and gravity pulls the saw down to do the actual cutting. Cutting under the log meant that not only was gravity not helping, but was actively working against you.

Step 3: Clear the cut of dirt. Larry does that here.

Eventually, though, we managed to cut through the log. Along the way, another team caught up with us and decided to take out the smaller log we had skipped. They took it out and passed us while were still working on our first cut.

I was put in charge of the second cut which went marginally easier than the first cut, but not by a whole lot. Finally the cut was made and I was ready to finally push that hunk of log off the trail before Larry stopped me.

"You want to get a picture of your cut first?"

I looked down at the cut, with two wedges still in it, and said, "Yeah, I guess I should." The sheer difficulty this log has caused us made me want to just forget about it, but I should get a record of it. Just in case I later decided I didn't want to forget about the log. =)

So I took a couple of photos then we all got behind the log and pushed it off the trail.

We headed up the trail in search of other logs blocking the trail. We passed other recently cut logs--obviously work from the teams ahead of us--then finally passed the other teams to take the lead where we finally found some more trees blocking the trail.

Step 4: Cut! Go, Marcella! Go!

The rest of the logs that day didn't pose as much trouble for us as that first one, and by the end of the day, our group had cleared several miles of the PCT from blowdowns. Team Buzzsaw's total for today was 7 1/2. We decided that any tree that was blocking the trail but didn't actually require a cut on the main trunk to get out of the way counted as a half. The half-tree might still require a lot of work on our part such as limbing and the collective efforts of several of us pushing the trunk with our legs to move--they were still serious trees in their own right and not trivial to move--but since we didn't actually have to log the tree out, we called it a half for our counting purposes. This is in no way an official way to count logged out trees. It just didn't seem right to count them as a whole tree, so as a team, we just decided to call them half-trees. =)

I wasn't sure how many trees the other teams logged out, and none of the others seemed interested in counting. Some of our trees were challenges that took significant amount of time and effort to get through while others were relatively quick and easy to dispose of, but for the day, our total stood at 7 1/2. Assuming the other three teams did about the same (and honestly, I have no idea if they did or didn't), that would mean our group collectively cut out 30 trees that day. Awesome!

I start clearing dirt and bark from our second cut.

We stashed our tools off on the side of the trail--no sense in carrying them all back down to camp just to carry them back up the trail the next morning. I did keep my handsaw, though, so I could cut down a couple of smaller branches that poked out into the trail but technically didn't block it for hikers. The PCT is a horse trail so a few of the logs that fell wouldn't have blocked hikers at all, but they might have caused issues for pack animals carrying large loads. They were generally small, though, and I figured I'd hit them with the handsaw on my way back to camp. The grub-hoe, cross-cut saw, loppers, and our axe stayed where we cut our last tree for the day, though.

I work on cut #2 while Marcella watches and hammers in the wedge. You can actually
see the second tree that had crossed the trail in the background, but it's already been
cut out by a passing team. (Those two logs still across the trail we put there
to help roll the big log off the trail after the second cut is done.)

My cut, completed!

The cuts are done, and we placed the two smaller logs across the trail
to help make it easier to push the big log off the trail.

Our job here is done. Time to move up to another log!

We never saw any bears, but Marcella did find these scratches--clear
evidence of bears in the area. =)

Here's an interesting setup. The log I'm cutting is resting on top of the log I'm
sitting on, and the log I'm sitting on is kind of in the way of the log on the left.
The other two logs are small enough to push around--but we can't
get to them until after we get rid of the big one that's holding them all
down. That tree I'm sitting on we called a "half" tree for counting purposes
since it requires quite a bit of effort to free it from the bigger tree,
but once it was freed, we didn't actually have to cut it. (We didn't count that third
tree at all since it wasn't actually "blocking" the trail, but we still pushed it
down slope since it was uncomfortably close to the trail.) And finally, note the
tree in the background in the sun that's sticking out into the trail. That's the one
we'll be attacking in the next two photos....

Marcella examines this tree sticking out into the trail.

I had the honors of cutting this log out. It was a relatively quick,
uneventful job. No limbs to hack off, one quick cut (no binding!),
and easily pushed off the side of the trail. No sweat....

I took this video hoping we'd catch a terrific crash as the log rolled down the steep slope. Unfortunately, the terrific crash never happened so the video isn't particularly exciting. I still find it strangely amusing, though, as we're all disappointed at the uninspiring show. =)

 And another reminder--the Washington Trails Association is warming up for another Hike-a-Thon, and we'd very much appreciate it if you could sponsor Amanda and myself this year! Your contributions to towards supporting work parties just like this one, preserving and maintaining trails around Washington state.

Team Buzzsaw

Jeff carries a cross-cut saw across a log spanning a creek.

I left you hanging with me stranded at a trailhead with a bunch of strangers and Amanda driving off to Seattle. Technically, it was true, these were a bunch of strangers, but being part of a Washington Trails Association (WTA) work party, clearly they were good people.

Gary was leading this expedition, eleven of us in total. Our mission: To log out the Pacific Crest Trail from Lemah Meadows to Solo Tarn where we heard reports of countless trees blocking the trail. We were loggers.

Gary separated us into smaller groups--three groups of three and one group of two--and I was hooked up with the husband and wife team of Larry and Marcella. Each team would carry one cross-cut saw (kind of a requirement for logging, no two ways around that!), so Larry carried the saw. Marcella carried an axe. And I grabbed the grub-hoe and loppers. I worried about the loppers--I wanted to log out trails, I didn't want to be stuck cutting back vegetation, and really, that's all the loppers were good for. So I was a little hesitant about taking those at all, but Marcella seemed keen on bringing them along and since my pack was unusually light (I left most of my backpacking here four miles up the trail at Pete Lake), I volunteered to carry it.

I had the choice of a pulaski and a grub-ho for the other tool I would carry, and ultimately settled on the grub-ho because it was lighter. I kind of assumed that a pulaski would be more useful since it had an axe on one side, but that seemed redundant since Marcella already carried a dedicated axe. So I wound up carrying two tools that I felt better suited for building tread and cutting back vegetation than logging.

All of our tools were hand tools. We would be hiking into a wilderness area where gas-powered tools such as chainsaws are not permitted. Everything had to be done the old fashioned way, which frankly, is the way I like it best. Chainsaws are so loud, obnoxious, and noisy. A cross-cut saw might be slower, but I enjoyed it more.

We all carried Corona handsaws--perhaps the most useful tool for loggers other than the cross-cut saw itself.

This little fellow decided to visit me while
I was sitting in the sun waiting for the
rest of Team Buzzsaw to catch up. =)

It wasn't until a couple of days later that I got to thinking about our team--Larry, Marcella, and myself--and brought up the idea of a team name. Larry suggested Team Buzzsaw, and I immediately agreed. I think Marcella rolled her eyes at this point, which I took as her sign of "Okay, whatever." =) So we became Team Buzzsaw, but for the first couple of days, we had no name.

Gary asked me how the trail ahead was and if there were any logs blocking the Pete Lake Trail--our side trail to the PCT. I told him about one log crossing the trail, suspended about chest high stuck between several trees, just past Pete Lake. Beyond that, I didn't know the condition of the trail.

"Well, maybe we can do something about that tree."

Yes, maybe we could. We had cross-cut saws now. =)

With safety talks over, tools handed out, and teams assigned, we headed out.

The hike was non-eventful. We all hiked at our own pace, and I jumped ahead near the end to retrieve the gear I left at Pete Lake. I was stunned, however, to see that the tree blocking the trail I had described so vividly to the others had already been cut down! What the hell happened? It was there four hours earlier when I hiked out, and it was obvious that someone had come along and cut it out, but who? Where? The only people around was the camp of Boy Scouts on Pete Lake. Did they do that for a merit badge or something? At least they would have done something useful than take up large quantities of space in the backcountry, but I was a little disappointed that we couldn't cut it out ourselves.

I repacked my backpack with all my gear--all 42 pounds of it--and walked back to the tree where the rest of Team Buzzsaw was admiring the work.

"Is this the tree you were talking about?" they asked.

This would be Team Buzzsaw's first challenge.

"Yep, and I'm absolutely baffled at what happened. I swear, just four hours ago, this tree was BLOCKING the trail!"

We continued up the trail where, a short ways up, we caught up with two woman who were logging out another tree blocking the trail. The tree fairies! I knew they existed! They worked for the forest service or something and had been told that a pack string of horses needed to get up to Lemah Meadows so they were sent in to clear the trail for horses. A misunderstanding, to be sure, and they were doing all of the work we intended to do. Once that was all settled, though, they left the rest of the trees for us and they started working on other trail maintenance projects.

Team Buzzsaw did cut out two logs blocking the trail that afternoon on our way to Lemah Meadows, and the sheer number of logs blocking the short path between Pete Lake and Lemah Meadows was encouraging. Looks like we'd have plenty of work ahead. =)

The trees we cut out weren't particularly noteworthy. The rested on largely flat ground, they weren't especially large, nor posed any technical difficulties. Just a couple of average, run-of-the-mill fallen trees for Team Buzzsaw to get its hands dirty and get used to working together. =)

In related news, if you want to help fund this kind of important trail work, please consider sponsoring Amanda and myself in the WTA's annual Hike-a-Thon! These tools aren't free, and it helps enormously to keep our hiking trails open for business--especially as state and federal governments get stingier about funding trail maintenance.

Here we've cut out the log and put a skidder under it to help us roll it off the trail.

The view from camp near Lemah Meadows.