June 25-27, 2005 - Vicente Flat Trail Logging Project

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Robert Parks' Thoughts

Saturday, this time, the carpooling was from the south, Mike H. rode in with Boon H. to the very crowded Kirk Creek pull-off. I had to parallel park in a space as tight as any in my neighborhood in San Francisco. Boon had to go all the way up to the tippy top of the pull-off to find space. I had made the necessary stop in King City to pick up tools and paperwork, without incident, as the map and directions were very clear. The drive over the Nacimiento-Ferguson Road made up for the extra time and miles...such a beautiful drive, unless you are not a fan of severely squiggly steep roads. As I was first, I was able to transfer the special goodies to my backpack discreetly. After some discussion, Boon and I left a virgin tool each behind, him, his 4' one-man crosscut, me, my new axe, mostly because my one-man saw is a thin kerf shortie, more useful in closed up cuts than a regular thickness saw.

The weather forecase was for fog in the morning, with marine influence all day. While it was sunny at the trailhead, it was deliciously cool and bug-free. True disclosure here: I am not a fan of the lower section of the Vicente Flat Trail...I could entirely do without the long slog into the mouth of Hare Canyon. Even in cool temperatures, it is unfun with a heavy pack, still, we made good time, fantasizing some more about someone, not us, working on the problematical tread. We declared lunch at Espinosa Camp (styled "Espinoisy Camp" by Boon, on our reports of traffic noise from Hwy 1), where I rolled out a cannonball watermelon, still icy cold from the cooler in the car...very very very good, there at the camp, also very very good to get out of my pack! Mike and Boon chose to stage their packs at Espinosa, while I decided to hump mine, tree to tree on our way to our camp at Vicente Flat.

Horse-startle stub (#44) was removed with some awkward axe work and a quick bit of single-bucking. After some investigation, #43 was cleared to the inside of the trail as any further sawing was likely to bring more of the unanchored but stable log down on the trail, both hazardous and more work. #38 was interesting...the first cut was fairly straight forward, the second bound up on top, and the log kept spitting out the wedges, in one case some dozens of feet down the trail, ended up underbucking that cut, using Mike's shovel. Boon finished the clearing by applying leg strength to the top of the rootwad, rolling it down off the sidehill and off the trail in a cloud of dust. While Mike was trimming some deadfall away from the trail, Boon manhandled #36 entirely off the trail.

After stashing the tools inside a handy redwood near the next worksite, Mike (with the big saw and daypack) and I (with the little saw and backpack), continued on to Vicente Flat, claiming the usual VWA Upper Camp. I parked the black bag of beer in the stream to cool and headed up canyon to get water, while Mike headed back to Espinosa Camp to get his backpack. After setting up my gear (not much, just a bivy sack, pad and sleeping bag) and setting up the brie and crackers, chocolate cherries and ??? for Happy Hour, I was surprised to see Mike and Boon very shortly, after all, Mike had a 3.5 mile hike to get his pack. Turns out that Boon, in the VWA tradition of excessiveness had carried both packs up the trail until Mike met him coming down, thus allowing an earlier start to Happy Hour. Lessee, what else was added? Smoked oysters and sardines, and ???. Thanks to Boon, we had Gin and Tonics, in addition to the usual whiskies, and my contribution of an Irish stout. As always, much fine discussion on many subjects before we retired at quite a reasonable hour. Temperatures were cool enough to require jackets and hats!

Sunday morning, we finished off the last of the obstacles on the trail west of Vicente Flat. First a complex of deadfall and logs on the side of a ravine. Mike had to clamber out on the deadfall to retrieve a plastic bag of garbage tossed not all the way into the ravine. While they were clearing stuff lower, I went at the stump on the trail with the max-ax (using the axe as well as the pick and hoe attachments) to remove dirt and rocks from the rootwad and allow chopping of the projecting roots. We then met in the middle to remove deadfall from above the trail and take out a bent over and pinned California Bay in the trail. Hah! The Vicente Flat Trail is now clear from Hwy 1 to Vicente Flat Camp!!! The massive redwood on the trail tread just out of Lower Vicente Flat Camp, was decided to be an unnecessary task, far easier to rebuild the few feet of trail into a functional short switchback than spend the enormous amount of work to cut that log several times.

Before lunch, we worked on the logs next to the Upper Camp, Boon chopping on the partially cut stub of #26, while Mike and I cut the Tanoak a few feet up the trail. Truly a joy to use that saw on a log like that (effectively a still green log from last winter's storms)...no sawdust at all, just long noodles. After lunch, we worked our way up the trail to the next big project, a stream crossing with deadfalls down every which way, and some large redwood boles grounded in the streambed, leaving a bare clearance to crouch under. We removed the stuff we could, and rerouted the stream crossing above the redwood boles, we'll see what happens after next winters floods, at worst, if the streambed scours out, the crouch-under is still available.

We looked at #22, determined that there is an easy stock bypass, and the current trail is easy for backpackers, and moved on. Perhaps a future trip could be undertaken to clear this off the trail entirely, but it would require an amount of work way out of proportion to the benefit. #21 should have been trivial...half cracked through midspan of the ravine, it should have only taken a cut at the top to send it crashing and sliding off the trail. No such luck. Three cuts, all with under-damned-bucking, and some armstrong work finally got it off the trail. We cleared a couple more easy logs and called it a day.

What can I say, another great, traditional VWA evening. We finished most of the heavy liquid refreshment, and make serious inroads into everything else that was edible. Having been early to bed, I was slept out early in the morning, so I was up at the pleasantly brisk hour of 6am. Mike soon joined me, and Boon later.

Monday: on to the next jackstraw pile (#19). I climbed up on the large redwood boles above the trail and cut the various logs hanging over the trail there. Back down of the ground, we cut up the smaller logs, and considered the remaining large log, a large tanoak stub crossing the trail from below (the top was snapped off above the redwoods). Using the previously cut logs, be built a ramp so that the tanoak would mostly self-clear after we cut it through, which it did, and then was cleared off the trail entirely with some more lever work. Next was the log that so alarmed me on the survey, It is still a massively long 36" tanoak, but from the perspective of a couple saw trips and further investigation, I think it is not that difficult of a problem. While we didn't have time to actually cut the log (twice), we did entirely clear all the debris from the trail and trim all the branches so that next trip will be simple cutting. We also walked up to the big redwood (#17) spanning the trail, and agreed that it is not necessary to clear it, as it is easily bypassed by stock and backpackers. It does, however, fall into the followup trip group that pack support would be critical for.

Back to camp for lunch and breaking camp. After lunch, I, having much less camp to break, went over the remove the last bit of #26 (an easily stepped over bole about 8+ inches through, one simple cut, then some axe work to get through splintered wood and a second cut to sever it and clear it off the trail. And off we went. Still pleasantly cool, with rather lighter packs, I still don't like the bottom of the Vicente Flat Trail, ended up moving like a rent-a-horse heading back to the stables on the Miracle Mile (that was brushed and treaded by the fire crews in recent years). All in all, a great weekend, with perfect weather for trailwork, and virtually no bugs at all.

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