935 Pounds Of Explosives! Upper Bear Creek goes BANG!

I love being a forest volunteer!

Today was an exciting day with horses, mules, and 935 pounds of gelatin explosive, all brought up to Upper Bear Creek Trail in the Angeles National Forest of the San Gabriel Mountains.

A whole lot of video and photographs were taken of the effort today, including video of the two blasts that removed the bulge and overhang cliff face of the section of Bear Creek Trail that was enough of a safety hazard to warrant the trail being closed. While the trail is still closed, the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders can come in and re-establish the trail across the blast site and get the trail re-opened!

Today began early with some of the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilder volunteers and High Country Riders volunteers getting their equipment and materials collected and on the road by five O'clock. The day was also a fairly long one with volunteers and professional crews getting back down to the bottom of the mountain around six O'clock -- and it was fun!

We met at the Rincon Fire Station to collect tools and check in with our radio dispatch and then we drove up to the Valley of the Moon where the upper trailhead is for Bear Creek Trail.

Upon driving up to the large parking lot at the trailhead the Trailbuilders joined the Riders who had already assembled and organized their non-human volunteers and had gotten their teams ready to carry the explosive materials, tools, and other equipment that would be needed for the project today.

The explosive materials were transported up to the Valley of the Moon staging site about an hour later, passing through the locked gate about five miles down the road after the Riders were ready to receive the packages and start them up the trail.

There were 17 packages, each weighing 55 pounds. The packs consisted of a long line of tubular gelatin packed in a thin plastic tube with a line of detonation cord running down its full length, terminated in a plastic end cap.

The detcord itself was not very fast stuff, only around 6000 feet a second! The Blast Master described the equipment to us all, saying that a line of the cord laid from New York to San Diego would take only 5 minutes to burn from end to end. Wow!

All of the Bear Split Hot Shot crews, the Riders, the USFS people, and the Trailbuilders received a detailed and very informative review of what we would be doing today and how the project was going to take place with the professional Blast Master literally (and figuratively) calling the shots.

The Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) report had been read and understood so that all expected and possible safety hazards had been accounted for with details about mitigation of those safety hazards along with response plans in the event any of those hazard were encountered today.

The JHA is a blueprint for outlining things that can go wrong, what will be done to mitigate things going wrong, and what we would do if anything went wrong, and the Analysis is always explained, read, and understood before the project, a copy of which I had printed off and read the night before.

All of us had hard hats, eye protection, and some of us ear protectors.

Humping along up the trail and trying to keep up with the Hot Shot fire crews and the USFS personnel was exhausting and I swear I nearly died from exhaustion and lack of oxygen trying to keep up. By the time we got to the collection point where the horses and materials would be staged near the cliff face I was covered in sweat and tired, more so since not one of the Hot Shot crew or Freddie (USFS) were even breathing heavy.

Oh man, to be young again. Still it wasn't really that much of a difficult or lengthy hike up the mountain to the project site and it was nice to hump right along without falling behind. I kept up so I could get excellent photographs of the professional crews and also to stay ahead of the horses and mules, all of which I wanted to get on video and with the still camera.

I can't believe some of the guys' humorous ragging on our forest out here, wondering what we had done with all of our trees. Southern California is a desert, after all, and with fires, bark beetle, pollution, and 22 million people around us, not having many trees left in our forest is unfortunate but expected. It was cool of Freddie to stand up for our forest and claim that each remaining tree up here has a name tag. LOL!

Upon arriving at the cliff face we took a look at the rock once again, some of us to re-aquaint ourselves with the job, and the Hot Shot crew to examine the trail problem for the first time.

Two volunteers had gone on ahead of us, Wayne and Bill who positioned themselves within line-of-sight of the project area at least 1000 feet away, far up the trail past the gap in the trail. They were "Safety Team 1" making sure that no hikers came down from Smith Mountain Saddle.

"Safety Team 2" consisting of Jeanette and Ben stayed at the trailhead below to make sure that no hikers walked up to Valley of the Moon and entered on to the hiking trail.

All subgroups of the effort were on an assigned radio channel with multiple radios added in to monitor the region's Dispatch. Both Safety Team volunteer groups had a radio, the Hot Shot crews had radios, the USFS crews had radios, the Horseman Team had a radio, and I had a radio, all configured and set for Tactical Three and all tested before we set foot on the trail.

The horses were unpacked while the Blast Master and the Hot Shot crews taking the training lesson today went over the expected placement of explosives and the placement of the blasting caps which would be used to direct the initial force of the explosion. After the animals were unpacked the Riders returned back down the mountain with their horses to await the end of the project.

For the two volunteer Safety Teams there wasn't much for them to do but continually scan the trail up and down the mountain constantly on the watch for any sign of hikers. For the professional crews there was much to do, not only with digging out rock and dirt for the placement of the explosives but also the examination of the rock fissures and the general lay of the rock.

Most of the other volunteers were basically observers with only an occasional task to do -- handing up rocks, moving rocks off of the trail and the project site, digging in to the cliff face a bit. This was kind of a shame because we had young volunteers who probably would have liked to have had something more to do today. It's a shame that some of the volunteers found the day rather boring.

There were four and a half packs of explosives set against the bulging cliff overhang, all with trailing detonation cord that were tied together with butterfly knots to another length of detcord. The end of the detcord was tied to a blasting cap which was electrically tied to a safely positioned radio receiving control box.

The other control box and the blasting crews moved up the mountain and joined "Guard 1," the Hot Shot crew who was near Safety Team 1. George and I joined Safety Team 1 at their point which had line-of-sight to the blast site, and when the Blast Master was satisfied, the radio called out the safety progression.

With my borrowed video camera recording, the Hot Shot taking the first shot stepped through the sequence on the second radio box which sent a digitally encrypted set of session handshake messages to the box down below.

Down below a huge spray of rock and dirt sprang up followed a second later by a tremendous shock wave rolling over us from over 1000 feet away followed a fraction of a second later by a huge bang and a ground quake under our feet. The dust and smoke above the blast collected in to a plume and roiled around itself in to a ball at the top of a growing pillar of dust. Around us the echoes rumbled on and on and on through the canyons.

The Blast Master called out a reaffirmation for all personnel to hold their positions followed up by radio calls from Guard 1 and Guard 2 confirming they had heard the order (after assuring that all people under their sight were still stationary, I expect.) After a while the Blast Master called "all clear" and we were allowed to come look at the results.

The first blast had removed the bulge and overhang but had not entirely carved out a shelf upon which the trail could be restored. It was a good first blast which gave the crews a better idea of how the rock was behaving.

Up and down the trail on both sides of the blast there were rocks and boulders on the trail that had been dislodged and down below the blast site there were huge boulders that had been wrenched out of the cliff, including the large block of dense granite that had formed the bulge (it was still recognizable, largely intact but 40 feet down the mountain.)

The Blast Master, Hot Shots, and USFS worked the first blast remains to see what had been accomplished, digging through the remains and looking at the rock. Eventually the decision was made to use the rest of the explosives (12 and a half packs!) to cut further back in to the rock face to see if a shelf could be created.

This time the placement of the explosives took a lot longer with two Hot Shots climbing up the cliff to place hanging cord from which bundles of explosives would be suspended. Six bundles were suspended and the rest were places at strategic points near the base of the cliff face.

Yikes! Those Hot Shot crews were up the cliff face without safety ropes, hauling away on thin lines dangled down below with 55 pound packages on them, arm-over-arm, tying off the lines to rocks and plants up there. Oh man, if any of us volunteers did that without belay ropes or emplace safeties, or ears would still be bleeding from the dressing down from our USFS coordinator! Ha!

But they were young, had a lot of experience, and knew what they were doing so for them it was safe. For me? I'll use safety ropes, pitons, and chocks, please.

There was a brief security alert that sprang up when Safety Team 1 reported three hikers climbing up the trail. Radio calls to Safety Team 2 to find out whether they were sending volunteers up the mountain were not returned despite numerous calls (the radio failure was later fixed, caused by a dead USFS vehicle battery.)

George and I grabbed our packs and worked our way down the trail toward the three people double time though about a half mile down we paused while I called down for the Riders to ask for one of their volunteers to head up to check out the people. The Riders volunteers dispatched someone on horseback but George and I continued to work down the mountain double time just in case.

Eventually the Riders reported that the three were our own volunteers who had left some time ago and that they were heading down, not up. Because of the lay of Upper Bear Creek Trail, there are switchbacks and perspectives that look like people going down are heading up and people heading up are going down.

Since we had assumed that our volunteers had had enough time to make it all the way down the mountain, any report of people on the trail was treated as recreational hikers and -- safety always first! -- it was good to take zero chances. Our Safety Teams did a great job being alert and making sure.

All of the hanging and emplace explosive packs were eventually placed with knots of detonation cord secured inside of them trailing down vertically, all of the packages tied together with a horizontal line of detcord.

This time the Blast Master and Guard 1 joined Safety Team 1, George and myself on the point within sight of the blast site. I got good video and audio of the whole process this time, staying mostly focused upon the cliff face but getting the radio detonation box in video as wll.

The Hot Shot taking the shot this time called out the safety progression and got us to "fire in the hole" after which about 18 seconds passed.

The spray of dirt, rock, and smoke this time and much larger and the heavy shock wave rippled across the distance and slammed in to us a second later, followed by an even bigger bang that shook the rocks we were standing on. The rumble and the echoes ringing back and forth through the canyons was terrific and while that was going on, further noise ad excitement was coming from the rock still sliding down the mountain at the blast site.

It was AWESOME times ten!

This time there was almost no breeze working North so the cloud of debris rose up and up and up, forming a ball on a long, two thousand foot column where it hung for a time before being picked apart by wind coming across the mountain top.

Once again the Master Blaster called for Guards to hold while he went down the mountain to ensure that all of the explosives had been detonated and that it was safe to proceed. The Blast Master also had the task for examining the surrounding region for any fires that might have resulted from the blast yet each time all explosives had detonated safely (one of the reasons Hot Shot fire crew were with us today.)

The Master, by the way, was a professional, no-nonsense kind of guy with all of his fingers after decades of doing this kind of work. He directed the placement of the explosives (often from across the way) and had the Hot Shots in training do a lot of the bundle work. He stepped through the safety progression with the crew who were pressing the switches for both of the shots and made sure that all steps were done and done in the right order.

Once the second "all clear" was given we headed down the mountain to examine the blast site once again. This time a whole lot more of the granite rock face had been removed and on the upper side of the trail a large number of boulders and rocks had come to rest on the trail, all of which will need to be removed by the Trailbuilders.

I got on the radio to confirm that the Riders could start up the mountain again to retrieve their equipment and tools and got a response that the animals were starting back up the mountain.

Examining the results at first looked like we had blasting that resulted in even more work for the Trailbuilders than would have resulted had we come up with rock hammers, bentonomite, chisel and picks and stuff instead of explosives however once the Hot Shots and Freddie (USFS) got to work on the debris we could see a shelf start to form under their shovels.

What we have now at the end of today is a slightly sloped vertical cliff face containing fractured granite below which there is extensive dirt and rock and a slight shelf which can be shaped in to a safe trail, perhaps one with a retaining wall tied in to the side of the mountain. If the Trailbuilders do it right (and we will!) the new set of wall, baskets, and trail work should last a long time.

Everyone headed back down the mountain to the Valley of the Moon stage-up area, got our equipment sorted through, and started to drive away one by one. Since it was getting late and starting to get dark we skipped stopping off at Rincon and continued on down the mountain, coming up behind a vehicle that was stopped in the middle of the highway with a missing front wheel.

While Bill stayed behind to assist with the injured vehicle the rest of us continued on down the mountain, completely happy with another successful day in the Angeles National Forest.