Hitch 2

Hitch 2: June 22, 2010 – June 30, 2010
Snodgrass Trail, Silver King Trail, Poison Flat Connector

Lead: Sara
Food: Aaron
Documentation: Hannah
Tools: Brian
SPOT beacon and vehicle checks: Darien

Trees bucked: 63
Total trail maintained: 49,400 feet
Total trail reestablished: 15875 feet
Drainage structure: 1

Hitch two began at the Snodgrass Trailhead. Projects for the first three days focused on opening up a corridor of space around the trail that would meet wilderness trail requirements and allow for stock travel. The five miles of trail on Snodgrass and Silver King hadn’t seen a work crew for many years and kept us very busy with large amounts of brushing. Many tread projects were focused on repairing damage and destroying side trails caused by sheep that were herded through the area. Silver King presented the crew with quite a few bucking challenges also, including a complex rat’s nest of downed trees, projects that the crew willingly took on as a strong interest in crosscut and axe work grew.

After moving from Snodgrass and Silver King the crew began work on a two and a half mile long section of extremely blocked trail that connects Silver King to Poison Flat. The crew bucked 43 trees on the Poison Flat Connector, as well as brushing the entirety of the trail and removing large quantities of debris. On the final day of the hitch the crew worked out of Long Valley, scouting the Coyote Connector for Hitch 5 and working on brushing and logging projects on the Long Valley trail. After spending the first week of the hitch with the wilderness to ourselves, we were surprised to see such a significant amount of foot traffic in Long Valley.

On our hike back out to the Snodgrass Trailhead the crew met up with a man who runs a nearby pack station. He had a lot of interest in which projects we were scheduled to work for the summer and was pleased to hear we had cleared all the way to the Silver King trail as he had never been able to take stock out there before.