July 24-25, 2005 - Vicente Flat Trail Logging Project

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Thoughts

Saturday, I carpooled down with Art S, arriving at the trailhead about 1am, apparently someone else had already claimed our hoped for carcamp spot a little up the road, so we slept at the trailhead. The weather was not promising, with no trace of fog over the coast (the trailhead is at 3200', in a gap a few miles from the ocean), and temperatures even at that hour near 70F. This just reinforced our plan to make an early start on Sunday and be in the redwoods before the full heat of the day was beating down on the exposed upper slopes.

Sunday, up at 6am, after the usual arranging, we were on the trail at 7am. We got down to #5, the wishbone log fairly quickly, retrieved the shovel from where it cached behind a tree and started planning our cuts. We knew at the least, we would have to cut both of the boles above the split so they would clear the trail. We hoped that the partially broken section on one side above the split would be easily separated, and if the log wasn't too heavy, we'd be able to roll it off, without making another cut below the wishbone. All went as planned, and we were able to roll the main chunk off the trail without too much difficulty. Two small madones got mowed over though. Interestingly, the size and difficulty of this log diminished each time we crossed it...experience at work, I suppose.

Log #6 was essentially a pus-over. I trimmed some of the longest branches, and then we manhandled it over and off the trail. Had to do some clearing of poison oak to get close enough to #7 to cut it. It was fairly well rotted, so the cutting was quick, even the underbuck. As expected, after we severed it, the top section slid down a bit and grounded by the side of the trail. We continued down the trail and entered the redwood forest in the bottom of the canyon about 10:30am and escaped the heat above.

As mentioned in my previous commentary, we had made some poor decisions on cutting Log #12, making the south side cut too close to the trail, and the section we cut out was too big and heavy for us to move off the trail. In support of the maxim that cutting is easier and faster than alternative methods of clearing logs, we cut the old section in two (~half hour), pushed them down the trail, where they rolled a 100+ feet to a small flat, where the trail is now flanked by two large log sections. We then blocked up the south end of the log, cut another section off it, which rolled easily off the trail and cleaned up the tread. Lunch was a bit further on, at a tiny flat that has been used as a campsite in the past.

Two easy obstacles and a substantial log remained. A smaller tanoak was quicly dispatched with the one-person saw, then we had to tackle our second wishbone of the day. This one, also somewhat broken up. This was lucky, because the boles were very close together and would have been very difficult to cut as they were. The smaller stem above the split was pried out and and rolled out of the work area. This allowed up to make a straightforward cut on the other bole. As expected, we weren't able to shift the rest of the log (broken off and pinned just below the wishbone), so we cut the overlapping ends of the breaks, which allowed us to roll the section out. We left the trail restoration for the next day, and moved onto Log #15, a mess of tanoaks that required a disproportionate amount of cleanup work before we could start cutting. Cutting was pretty fast, and it felt pretty damned good to cut the last of the project logs. There remain some obstacles on the trail, but they are either big logs that are not worth the effort (having long established detours) or require expertise/equipment beyond our provision.

Log Camp, so named because of the section of #16 we previously rolled down into the camp area has all the usual benefits of a canyon camp save one. Water is difficult, the camp is on a bench, and the stream is a nearly sheer 30 feet below, although we found a steep scramble down nearby. After washing up and changing, we enjoyed the celebratory champagne (actually Napa sparkling wine) I had packed down. I did remember to take the wire doohickey off the cork before I let it pop out. The cork had impressive loft, but landed where I was able to find it Monday morning. Other than that, it was a typical VWA worktrip evening, enlivened by the visit of an owl

Monday, after another warm night, we repeated our early work routine, working on the tread we had left disturbed teh day before, and brushing out some particularly bad sections. One we emerged from the redwoods, it was a hard, hot slog with the packs and tools out. In fact, the haul out was more difficult than the previous day's work. In fact, stopping to clear brush, fix the tread or knock out #4, which we had missed on the way in (perhaps because it was obscured by the luxuriant growth of poison oak) was was break, allowing us to cool off a bit before shouldering the packs again. We got to the trialhead just before noon, and departed by 12:15pm, I was home by a few minutes after 4pm.

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