National Trails Day along East Fork Trail

It's National Trails day! Today the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders teamed up with around 60 Boy Scouts, Cal Poly Honors College students and other volunteers to return to East Fork Trail along the San Gabriel River in the Angeles National Forest, working on the hiking trail that leads to the famous "Bridge To Nowhere."

What fun it was, too! We gathered at the Gateway Information Center down at the bottom of the mountain along Highway 39 (San Gabriel Canyon Road a.k.a. Azusa Blvd.) at mile post 17 and promptly at 8:00 we packed everyone in to cars and headed up the highway, took a right turn at East Fork Road and on to the Heaton Flats trailhead.

At Heaton Flats the volunteers unloaded the trail working tools and equipment that would be used today and then a safety rundown was given by Ben who covered the use of the tools and the plants and animals that one should attempt to stay away from in the region.

Southern Pacific rattlesnakes were out and about despite the low cloud cover and cool temperatures, as were scorpions, ticks, and plenty of lovely green and very healthy poison oak growing all through the canyons.

Usually when there are fairly large numbers of volunteers things start out slowly since there is a lot of things to do, sorting through the tools, packing all the backpacks, making sure that extra drinking water is carried in, all the usual stuff that shaves five minutes here, ten minutes there, but very quickly everything was organized and we were ready to go!

There were enough volunteers today to break up in to around 5 teams which would be spread out along the first half mile or so of the trail. The volunteers picked the tools they would like to start out with and then they hiked in to the work areas.

Most of the work done today consisted of removing boulders and large rocks from the trail, digging them out with rock bars, picks, and shovels and then reworking the trail with McLeods and buckets of sand and gravel carried in from the surrounding area.

The trail segment leading to the first river crossing got some excellent work done so that now there is a well-defined path through the rock field that leads to the "feet dry" point across the river -- two downed trees that can be used to stay mostly dry when crossing.

In addition to that work, three other teams attacked rock fields in three other areas, digging rocks up, moving boulders aside, and laying down a smooth path that eventually toward the end of the day were linked up pretty well and made a long section of reworked trail.

Another team of volunteers tackled a length of trail that climbed up and down a dirt-covered crop of granite that was strewn with rocks and boulders. That team hauled rocks and reworked boulders to form a set of stairs that lead up the rock face and form a bit of a spiral as it climbs -- really neat work!

Though it was a bit overcast and cool with rumbles of thunder off in the distance, eventually it was time to drop the tools and go swimming! Not much work gone done after that but it didn't matter, the trail sections we worked on today look great!

The hundreds of bunjee jumpers and the dozens of hikers and campers that take to this trail every week will be amazed at the way the start of the trail has been improved, and while it was a lot of hard work, it was great fun, too!