Hitch 2 -- Finally Summer + Brushing

Hitch Summary

“I never enjoyed grander company. The whole wilderness seems to be alive and familiar and full of humanity. The very stones seem talkative, sympathetic, and brotherly. No wonder when we consider, we have the same mother and father.” - John Muir

Our second work hitch varied from the first in two main ways: the required work and the weather. Located along the Lake Creek Trail that leads into the North Fork of the Umatilla Wilderness, we were mostly assigned to clear the trail corridor. This included lopping or sawing branches off trees both vertically and laterally, cutting down small trees, using power brushers to clear woody plants, and sometimes performing tread maintenance. In terms of the weather, it was much better than the first hitch with mild daytime temperatures in the 60s and 70s with cooler nighttime temperatures in the high 30s. All in all, we accomplished a lot with little to complain about other than the physical exhaustion that is pretty much a given with trail work.

The first day was mostly dedicated to getting oriented and setting up base camp. We were escorted to our site and towards the end of the day we scouted out about half a mile of the Lake Creek Trail. During the following two days, we were mostly clearing the corridor from the beginning of the trail. It was not until the third day of work that we started looking at possible tread repair that we could do in addition to clearing. The next couple days we were split up into two teams: one doing tread work and the other corridor clearing, with a swap halfway through the day. Regarding tread work, we were focusing on widening the trail and redefining the hinge and backslope. As we discovered more of how overgrown the trail was in the coming days, we decided to switch back to corridor clearing with all hands on deck to get as much done as our bodies would enable us. In total, we cleared about 3.5 out of 4 miles on the Lake Creek Trail and maintained about 900 feet of tread.

Fortunately, this time we had minimal unwanted encounters with animals; although, we did see a herd of both bull and cow elk nearby our trail…As usual, the food tasted fantastic and of course, as John Muir said, the company was grand.

Work Summary