Hitch 2 - Blue Hole

June 20 - June 28, 2011

We are back from another hitch on the Imnaha River Trail! This time we hiked out about 2 miles to camp at ‘Blue Hole’, which is a popular destination during the warmer time of the year to go swimming. As of now, the river is still running pretty quick so we didn’t go swimming, but we did run into more hikers than we had before which is encouraging. We spent our first day of hitch brushing back the ever-present Ceanothus bushes, but moved on for the rest of the hitch to bigger issues on the trail. First we cleared a large nest of trees that had fallen across the trail and diverted a stream to run right down the middle of it. By moving the trees and fixing up the drainage we saved hundreds of feet of trail from impending water-doom.

Our biggest project was further down the trail where a previously built bridge had collapsed. We tore the old bridge out and put a nice solid turnpike over the stream with two culverts underneath to allow the water to flow unimpeded to the river. This required moving hundreds of cubic feet of rock from the nearby hills and a whole lot of digging in the mud, but the end result is quite satisfactory. Be sure to check out the photos below and our ‘Project Information’ page to see GPS locations of the work we’ve done.

We also want to take this opportunity to say goodbye to Rick and Lander as they move on to other things. We wish them good luck in the future and hope they keep tabs on us here on our site!

- Michael

Hitch Totals:
Turnpikes Constructed: 1 @ 15' long
Brushing: 3300’
Tread Maintained: 100’
Rock Waterbars Built: 2
Drainages Maintained: 4
Logs Cut Out Of Trail: 40
Structures Removed: 1 Bridge