Big Cieneca Trail Gets Cleaned Up

Photographs are provided at the bottom of this web page.

01/Sep/07:

It's Labor Day week end and it's hot hot hot! But nothing is too hot, too rainy, or too freezing cold for the San Gabriel Mountain Trail Builders and your intrepid adventurer (that would be me!) to spend some time in the San Gabriel Mountains doing trail restoration and maintenance volunteer work.

The day began as it usually does: with a whimper and a denial that it is, in fact, morning and time to get up.

Tossing two water containers and my old leaking canteen into my knap sack, I climbed on to my borrowed bicycle and headed toward the Azusa King Ranch Market to meet with the others, pausing to note on a bank advertisement sign that it was already 74F degrees and rising even as I pedaled past.

For a wonder I was the first to arrive, an hour and a half early since in the Summer when the temperature is expected to exceed 100 degrees the SGMTBs like to start an hour earlier than during the Winter months.

Wayne, Jannett, Bill, Ben, Mike, and myself headed up to Rincon Station along Highway 39 within the San Gabriel River Ranger District of the Angeles National Forest, there to collect the tools we would be using and to see whether the fire crews had any ice we could have (they didn't.) From there we headed up to the Big Cieneca Trail which begins along the road that leads up to Deer Flats in the Crystal Lake Recreation Area (which is still closed and is likely to remain closed until 2009.)

The goals of the day included taking a look at the general condition of the trail, doing some tread work on the lower section, and removing all of the downed burned trees from the entire length of the trail.

We saw a bear cub (about two years old) walk across the road and stop to stare at us, and we saw many deer resting in the shade while we walked past them.

Generally and for safety sake, chainsaw crews comprise three volunteers so we kind of split once we reached the trailhead. Wayne, Bill, and Jannett started the day's efforts working on the trail, reshaping the ground, moving branches, brush, pine cones, and rocks to make the trail useable and to try to keep water (if it ever rains again!) from causing damage to the trail in the future.

Since it was hot hot hot, I joined the easier work in the chainsaw crew. We walked the length of the lower trail section without finding any trees to remove, then walked from the upper section down to where we had parked our cars, removing downed trees along the way.

Since the fire danger is EXTREME, we worked with the chainsaw only until around 12:30 and then stopped since there are regulations which prohibit the use of gasoline powered chainsaws past 13:00. (You'll notice that we follow all the rules religiously. In the photographs you'll notice that we wear our safety gear when using the chainsaw. We're GOOD volunteers!)

We still managed to get everything removed from the trail however one very long burned tree that had started to fall was hung up in other living trees which overhang the trail and the next time we go out we will want to attach ropes, pull that puppy down, and buck up that dead tree to remove that safety hazard.

It was exhausting work if only due to the heat. Mike did almost all of the cutting though I was afforded a rare opportunity to make three cuts! My own chainsaw (that I bought used for $25) still needs to be repaired so I didn't bring it (tie it on to my borrowed bicycle's handle bars?) I want the USFS to fix it for me for free, in fact.

Since the next day (Sunday) was going to be even hotter, I decided I would not spend the night in the forest, biking down in the morning through the oppressive heat. Instead I came down the mountain with the rest of the volunteers, passing what was left of the huge throngs of forest visitors parked along the highway (photographs below.)

Sunday and Monday the U. S. Forest Service should see about 20,000 visitors to these canyons. The trash and sewage is a phenomena and a sight you just have to see and experience, if you haven't already.

During today's efforts I heard on the radio:

o Four brush fires with fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters responding, complete with eyes on the ground having to hike in with their equipment to stomp, monitor, and smother any remaining flames not extinguished by the water and retardant drops.

o One false alarm fire called in which was actually thunderstorm clouds boiling over a mountain top. False alarms also have to have resources jump on to them.

o At least two heat exhaustion medical callouts, at least one of which required a helicopter evacuate after rescue crews hiked in to locate and stabilize the victim, call in their location, and coordinate the helicopter landing.

o One female bee sting victim who was transported to Rincon Station, presumably for prompt evaluation since she had some how been stung on the tong.

o And endless parade of requests for law enforcement efforts to address dangerous behavior up and down the canyons, the most frequent one being illegal cooking and camping fires -- this despite the fact that no fire signs exist in Spanish damn near every 20 frocking feet or so along the popular camping areas.

The United States Forest Service people who work up here do one hell of a difficult, demanding job, I always like to mention. They're at times doing work like cops, medics, marriage therapists, sanitation engineers, biologists, geologists... The USFS people up here at times have to be everything imaginable as they work in a forest which gets a great many visitors and not enough actual police officers patrolling these canyons.

A great many forest visitors think that the rules and laws of civilized society no longer exist once they start heading up into the mountains, and the USFS people have to deal with them while trying their best to keep everyone -- all 20,000 of them! -- safe while trying to protect what's left of the forest.

Oh! And the USFS also works with crazy volunteers! Pray for them.