Boreal B[l]og

My left knee has bothered me off and on for a few months, the problem beginning last winter after a strenuous snowshoe up to Fuji Shelter from Waldo Lake Road. There is an easier way to get to the shelter, but the way I took had fewer people, and yeah, it was more difficult, the way I like it. Anyway, I got better and then snowshoed again, not as far, but apparently far enough to bother the knee again. Three more weeks off snowshoes and I repeated with another snowshoe, not too strenuous, but apparently my knee continued to protest. No change.

I was looking for a hike that I hadn’t done, interesting, and not too strenuous. A friend told me last year about Pool Creek Falls up FS23 out of Oakridge towards Vivian Lake, 19 miles uphill. We actually were driving by the trailhead at the time, but I couldn’t see anything. Turns out that at about mile 13, there is a small grassy pullout, and if one looks carefully, there is a trail. I had been by this a dozen times or more, usually dodging a big depression in the pavement there—AKA “sunken grade.” 

I drove up FS23, dodging a 75-100 yard long pile of rocks in the downhill lane 7 miles up and a few scattered rocks further on.  I stopped at a grassy area,I parked the car, saw the trailhead sign, visible only when one was not on the road. I got my gear on, and started up the trail. When I had gone about 20 yards on the trail, I realized I had to be on the other side of the stream to my left and had to turn around..  Great start.  I crossed Pool Creek on a bare, slippery log that fortunately needed only one foot to briefly touch, then started switchbacking up the muddy path.

To help my knee, I used trekking poles, rather than my Saguaro walking stick. I like the stick, a veteran of 500 miles of the Appalachian Trail, several national parks, including Gates of the Arctic in Alaska, where it was invaluable in stream and rock pile crossings.  The trekking poles supported my weight better than a single pole, and other than having to cross two close logs, the first by crawling over, the second’s having a notch cut through it, the trail wasn’t too bad; a quarter mile put me right in front of the falls. Simply beautiful.  Close to the road, but not easy to reach. 

I hiked another quarter of a mile around the falls and uphill, before I decided that I was by myself, there was plenty of mud to slip on, and I didn’t need to be adventurous. I turned around and slid back down. My knee was still fine, and I wanted it to stay that way.

Back at the car, I tried to go further to the Vivian Lake trailhead, going four of the 6 miles before I hit snow, which rapidly deepened. I stopped well before I was going to get stuck and turned around. 

On my way back down 23, I again saw a small tree across the the road.  I had driven over it on the way up, but I don’t like doing that and had time, a saw, and ability to take care of the problem. So I did.  There are several roads into trail heads in spring where there are blowdowns. The Forest Service cuts them out, sometimes with scanty clearance. It’s amazing what people will do on a road to avoid hitting a blowdown or getting out of the vehicle to deal with it. I plead guilty. The drive to Horse Creek Trailhead is a veritable zig zag from one side to the other. On the way in, we want to get started on the trail and don’t want to stop to clear the road. We’ll get it on the way out, except when we drive out, we are all so tired, we don’t. And so nothing changes. The rocks that had fallen on FS23 needed to be removed as well.  One can dodge these rocks, but on a trip to a work site along Hills Creek Reservoir a few weeks earlier, the driver thought his pickup would clear such a rock. A moderately loud scraping noise—the kind that makes you immediately think “oil pan”— told us we hadn’t. Fortunately, there was no damage, and on the way back I got out and removed the offending rock along with a few others. Remembering that day, I decided to clear rocks on this road as well. It was a nice day to work.

As I came down further, there was a tree branch over the opposite lane. Sure, it could be dodged by uphill traffic, but it was better if I cut it out. So I did. My knee was not bothered by road work, and there seemed to be a need for it. I finally reached the long stretch of rocks from where a good chunk of cliff had collapsed from the winter precipitation. There was mud over part of the road and a rock field out in my lane and even part of the other lane. This was a hazard. 

I turned off the engine, put on the flashers, since I was parked in the middle of the road, fortunately on a straightaway, so I would be easily seen in time. Anyway, I hadn’t seen a car since I had left Oakridge. The first two rocks were tossers, but then there were push hard rocks, lift and roll rocks, hike rocks, like a football, and a couple that weren’t going anywhere without a front end loader.  I worked my way down the road, wishing I had brought a shovel and a rake, but I had gloves and I had—uh oh not on—a hard hat. If ever there were a place I needed a hard hat, picking rocks out off a road below a cliff would seem like a good idea. I went back to the car and put on my hardhat. Twenty minutes later, the rocks were clear. The mud might last, or the next rain might wash it off. Then again, the next rain might bring down more rocks. Still, the road looked a lot better. I drove down to the nearly full reservoir and had lunch in the sun. Nice day for a hike and a little road work.

This weekend, I am going up FS 24 to one of the Waldo Lake Wilderness trailheads. I don’t expect to do much hiking yet: the trails go well above 5000 feet, and there will be snow. But the roads will be heavily traveled by people this summer, people too busy to stop and clear the road going in and too tired and eager to get home to clear it when they leave. Maybe I can help.

One of the competing projects with the Winberry trail restoration was finishing the Indian Creek bridge on the Middle Fork of the Willamette River. The creek flows into the Middle Fork about 8 miles south of the reservoir, 23 miles south of Oakridge. The Forest Service was able to move a pre-built footbridge, with no rails, from a nearby road, through the woods, and install it on both sides of the river. One could cross the river, but with no rails, it was a bit dicey doing it.  Our job was to put in posts to support a thick kick or base log and two hand railings on each side of the length of the 60-odd foot span. We had to get our own wood, finding the right size Western red cedar trees for logs 8-9 inches in diameter and 4 feet long for the 10 posts on each side of the bridge. In addition, we needed 3-4 inch diameter smaller logs to support the posts. Then we needed 4-5 inch logs to put in two sets railings on both sides.  We used red cedar for its tannins which resist rotting.

To access the crossing, we parked on a Forest Service road, bushwhacked 200 yards downhill to the Middle Fork Trail, which runs 30 miles from the reservoir south to Timponagas Lake, then walked another quarter mile to the bridge.  Fortunately, near the site were many cedars we could use. The diameter-appropriate logs were cut to the right length. These were stripped of bark, a process in the right time of spring is easy, for the bark will peel away from the underlying cambium. We were initially a little early, however, and on each log we needed to scrape with more difficulty, about 30 square feet for a 14-foot long, 8-inch diameter log, where each scrape might clear maybe 10-20 sq inches. The debarked trees were then carried to the bridge. A good sized cedar would produce several logs, of which we needed 20, ten on either side. Close by meant within a quarter of a mile, which we had to do with the logs on our shoulder alone, with another, or with a large one, 4 people each pulling on a strap. Many of these logs had to be moved uphill to the trail, then along the rocky trail mostly downhill to the bridge. The old trail went to the river further downstream so when we found logs in that area, we had people on the other side of the stream throw a line across and then pull the logs over. From there, it was about 100 yards to the bridge, saving an immense amount of walking.

Putting in the posts and the supports was fairly straightforward, and the structure started to appear.  I wasn’t involved with this part, because I was helping find red cedar, trying to distinguish it from incense cedar, which has a more scaly bark, and then obtaining longer 5-6 inch diameter logs to be used for the railings. Cedar grows more conically than firs or maples, so a large log at the base tapers significantly in 20 feet. For debarking, I used a a U-shaped scraper, where one straddles the log and scrapes towards oneself. There were also long scrapers for those who wanted to stand. We scraped the larger diameter logs first, taking at least an hour each. We first scraped in the woods, then we carried the logs to the work site.

Later, we carried the logs down to the work site, debarked, and when we had enough bare logs, the following week we could send 3 people back to the bridge to work on it, while the rest of us worked on another trail.  One day, when we ran low on logs, two of us left the work area to go further afield to find cedar. We found several three miles away along a small track that barely admitted a vehicle, felled them, stripped the branches, and while the cutter looked for more, I dragged the trees to the truck and put them in the bed. We got six such logs in the afternoon by slogging around the hillside, measuring diameters, either with an appropriate tape measure, or doing the circumference and dividing by pi, my preferred method. I helped the driver back out a half mile on the road to where we could turn around, drive back and dropped off the logs. 

It was clear we needed even more logs to finish than the six we had, so two of us were charged to go out the following Tuesday, not our typical work day, to find at least ten more logs for approximately 150 linear feet.   Because we needed certain lengths of logs to fit together, we would require somewhat more than the linear foot measure.  This time, we backed in a half mile initially and then started looking for trees. It was not a good day for my knee, because I was climbing on uneven, unstable ground. At one point, I slid down a hill part way, taking a large chunk of moss with me, which I did not want to do. Worse, when I tried to put the moss back, I started sliding more. I finally realized the best way to avoid even more damage to the moss and me was just to get off the hill.  The first three hours we were out, we found only 3 trees, but we found 8 more early that afternoon and drove back to the parking area by the bushwhack, took each log out and slid it down the bank with the others. Some poor guy was going to have to carry those logs downhill through the woods to the trail and then to the bridge for debarking.

Two days later, I was one of those guys.  I carried 3 of the shorter ones, 10 feet long, on my shoulder to the bridge. Then I worked with another with the longer logs, carrying on our shoulders for three more trips. He told me, after the first, “I sure am glad these are light.”  I cringed. I thought they were heavy enough, thank you, and was glad when we got to the work area to unload them. He realized he needed a pad for his shoulders. I was involved with carrying at least 9 of the 16 logs, de-barking ten. Fortunately, the sap was running, and the bark came off in long strips. It looked like we would have enough logs.

The logs had to first be placed for the top railing, where there were junctions between them. That was time consuming, cutting the junctions, until Mac joined us with his power tools, including a cute little Makita chain saw, which was like a Stihl or a Husky that hadn’t been fed. That and his large supply of 5 Ma portable batteries, an inverter in his jeep, so he could recharge them, and we could cut out sections with electric hand saws, grind them with a rotary sander, fit them together, and screw them into the posts, all with power tools. Every 15-30 minutes another log was attached to the bridge. We could have finished the bridge that day if we had stayed to sunset, but it was after 2, and we were all tired.

The last week, I worked one more day with Mac and Steve, just the three of us. It was supposed to rain all day, but it was partly cloudy with only a few sprinkles, as we secured the last four logs on the upstream railing. The rain had pushed the stream up a great deal, and the roar drowned out the sound of the electrical equipment. The bridge was finished, after ten visits by the Crew.

We had to clean up, putting the bark into the woods, where it would decompose, taking the cut pieces of logs and doing the same. We raked up the area, took our pictures, and bade farewell to this part of the Middle Fork River. Then it started to rain hard. The woods recover quickly. The trails we had to the vehicles will be overgrown and not visible in two years. The bridge will outlive me by a lot.

The first time I saw Winberry Divide Trail on a work party, a year ago, it was hot, and we had to start clearing brush in the first ten feet in order to walk any further. I couldn’t imagine why anybody would want to work on this trail or who even knew the trail was out here.  We cut out logs and worked our way up the trail with power brushers to remove growth coming in over the trail,  and about two feet on either side of the trail, slow going in the heat,. We cleared about half a mile and then returned. Not much to see. 

We came back the following week, finished power brushing the mile of the trail to where it crossed the Forest Service road we had parked on down below. We walked back down the road to the cars, rather than taking the trail, so we could cut out the numerous trees that had fallen and were blocking the road, because the next time we came we were going to drive up the road to the second part of the trail.

That following week, two of us drove to the top of the passable road, where the second part of the trail ended and where the third part of the trail began.  While we did that, others used power brushers from below and we worked our way down, cutting out logs that some cutters had cut part way through and then had left.  That’s not good form and at the least should be flagged as a hazard with colorful tape, which was not done.

Several weeks later, because in summer our priority is cutting out logs in higher elevation wilderness areas, we started doing some tread work. When fall came, and the high country was getting snow, we continued the tread work on Winberry, removing plant material on the side, throwing the soil well off the trail, and recovering what had once been a well graded path that had had some love years ago.

By December, we were ready to tackle the top part of the trail, 1.2 miles, climbing several hundred vertical feet to a ridge between the Winberry and the Lookout Point reservoir drainages. We had logged it out; we now needed to power brush the whole trail and then do tread work on all six thousand feet of it. We worked in a snow drizzle using multiple pairs of gloves each day, digging, getting on our knees to pull out Salal and some Oregon grape, and we worked the tread more than a yard wide as we moved up the ridge. I was one of two who power brushed the whole trail.  After we finished, we then continued to improve the tread, refurbish some steps that were abandoned in 2007, leaving only at a root wad hole and a spot where the trail needed to be rerouted to be future work. I learned on Wiinberry how important good rain gear is for trail work.

At this point, the Crew got a big thanks on social media from a contingent of mountain bikers who were thrilled someone was recovering the trail.  I never mountain biked, but I was a 60K + miler roadie, so I know the importance of having good routes to put spoked wheels on. Winberry would be a beautiful trail to ride.

In April, I led a four member crew to the ridge from the reservoir side and we power brushed the mile stretch that formed part of the E2C—Eugene to Pacific Crest Trail.  Two weeks later, I led a hike with the Club to show what 13 visits to a trail (12 of those visits I was on) can do. Hikers occasionally need to see what kind of work goes into a trail, for falling trees and encroaching brush don’t disappear without some work by someone. Four days later and 20 degrees cooler, much wetter, five of us drove up the road, around the bushes that pushed out over the grade, through large puddles, now able to avoid cut stumps that once almost took out one of my headlights, in order to tackle the root wad hole and make the trail safer.  We worked in rain and mud, using cut logs or rounds to support a series of three retaining logs, one we found that used to line the trail but was no longer relevant there; the other two came from a nearby tree.  We filled in the holes with rock that we found 100 yards or more away and had to be towed with a rope to the work area, lowered down a hill in a bucket, or hand carried near the trail and passed off to another. The trail looks great now. We still have work to do, but it is now safe to hike, in a pretty woods, especially higher up, and doesn’t get a lot of use. 

I love the rock wall near the top of the trail, a place that stays cool in summer, has a covering of almost turquoise moss in places, and where the trail is by necessity narrow with a drop off into a small ravine.

I look forward to the time when we can add a switchback to the trail to avoid a steep spot that when wet is difficult to negotiate when wet and will lead to erosion. I went by spots where I ate lunch, lying on my back and looking up at the trees and sky while I rested. And now I can add the root wad repair to my list of places on the trail where I spent hours one day and learned about the trail by seeing, smelling, and touching, and when mud splattered, by tasting.

We had had an interesting morning on the Middle Fork Trail of the Willamette River, beginning the job of building a railing for the new bridge over Indian Creek, a free flowing tributary of the Middle Fork. We found our own materials, Red cedar, in the nearby woods, stripped the bark off it and then took the bare logs to the bridge area to eventually place as one of the smaller posts or a larger railing.  

We split into two groups, one to work on the trail tread, the other to search for hopefully nearby cedar, where we could strip and carry them a short distance. Red Cedar is not heavy, about 27 lb per cubic foot dry, a lot more wet, which these were. We had to fell the trees, take the limbs off them, then it was possible to move the definitely heavy log from the woods to the trail, where we made precise measurements, cutting the logs into four foot lengths for posts. Then it was time to start de-barking.

I had at my disposal various types of scrapers, knives, axes, other sharp implements to slice through the bark to the fascia over the cambium layer, then cutting through the fascia to the cambium itself, what we wanted exposed. I didn’t know that trees had fascia like we do.

I hadn’t seen tree felling in thirty years, back when I spent a season as a wilderness canoe ranger in the Boundary Waters, and we used crosscut saws to fell trees that were potential dangers to campsites. I remembered to look up at the branches of the tree we were going to fell to see where most of the weight was, so we could predict where it would fall. Fortunately, many of the Crew had backgrounds with the Park Service, Forest Service, or BLM (Bureau of Land Management), and they were certified fellers.  One of us put pink ribbon on cedars we were to cut, we had one sawyer, and I was the swamper, working with the cutter and doing the limbing.  Cutting is a lot different from bucking on the ground. Tree falls, limbing, or removing the limbs is necessary, and instead of pushing logs off the trail, we brought logs to the trail, in order to carry them to the bridge.

It was a busy morning, with several crossings of the incomplete bridge with no rails, fast flowing water 12-15 feet below. I didn’t want to slip, and I was a more afraid than I thought I should be. I certainly did not want to be the person leaning out over the stream putting the posts in.  

A little after noon, later than I like, since I have been up since 5, we broke for lunch. I was on the opposite side of the stream from where others were eating, and while I had my lunch in my pack, it was too shady and cool on the side of the stream where I had been working.  I made yet another crossing of the bridge, again watching my footing carefully, and walked up the small rise on the other side. I didn’t see anybody eating until I was about 50 yards from the stream, when I saw three of the Crew near the trail. They were in shade eating their lunch, but a nearby brilliant green area between two logs, in full sunlight, caught my attention. I headed into the woods towards it.

I really should have stayed away and left the area alone, but I told myself I would be careful. This was a 25-50 square foot area of thick moss, a few inches thick.  It was damp, but nothing was going pass through my rubberized work clothes. I put my gray foam pad on the moss against one of the logs and sat down. 

What relief. I sank into the moss, carefully extended my legs, being careful not to kick any of the moss loose, took off my hardhat and leaned back looking up at the sky.  The sun was warm, the stream could be clearly heard, the conversations a few yards away were inaudible, and I took a long drink before beginning my lunch. I have several parts of my lunch, beginning with a sandwich and a half, followed by raisins, some German chocolate a friend sent me, occasionally some Russian chocolate another sends mw for my birthday, some Lindt’s that I buy here, a protein bar, and half an apple I bought from Detering Orchards up in Linn County last October. It takes me a good 20 minutes, emphasis on good, to go through all of this, staring at the sky, the trees, the clouds, even at one plane that went through a small clear gap in the branches, heading to Portland or Seattle.

After putting my lunch bag away and taking another drink, I reversed the sitting down process, carefully lifting my feet and putting them under me.  When I stood up.  I put my hardhat on, carefully lifted the pack and put in on. The moss was compressed, but it would come right back. Nothing was obviously dug up. I took one step on it, and the next step I was off.  It was obvious I had been there, but it looked like it would do fine.

I don’t know what got into me. I am usually much more careful about moss, which takes years to grow and seconds to destroy.  This was a special place.  I bowed my head and apologized to the plants for their putting up with my compression, and slowly walked back to the trail where the others had just finished their lunch.

The following week, we would come back, but I ate lunch by the trail, my back against a tree.  I sat on bare ground. The mossy area looked good, and I left it alone.