Hitch 4

Hitch 4: July 20, 2010 – July 28, 2010
Long Valley Trail, Coyote Connector, Murray Canyon

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

Total trail maintained: 26,000 feet
Total trail reestablished: 7,300 feet
Drainage structures: 6
Trees bucked: 31

The crew returned to Long Valley for hitch four, based out of a beautiful camp along the river and working on restoring a connector trail between Long Valley and Coyote Valley. The trail had disappeared in many areas which made for a good challenge to the crew. We did a significant amount of brushing, tread work, and logging that was concentrated in roughly a mile of trail. The last section of trail had been almost completely swallowed up by the meadow it ran through and the crew spent the final day in Coyote Valley removing sagebrush and opening the trail for users. Work on the connector trail was some of the most rewarding work of the season. The crew made huge improvements to the trail which was previously almost unusable due to the extreme difficulty of finding and following the trail.

After finishing the connector trail the crew moved to the Upper Gardner Meadow Trailhead to work on Murray Canyon. Similar to Long Valley, we saw a fair amount of foot traffic in Murray Canyon. We worked on 4 miles of the Murray Canyon Trail, accomplishing a large amount of work in our short time there, despite losing time during the day to the six-mile round trip hike to and from work and periodic thunderstorms.