Islip Ridge Trail, Day 2

Today was another awesome day volunteering in the Angeles National Forest. Though it got to be pretty hot and though the work was difficult, it was no where near as hot and difficult as it had been two weeks previously when the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders came up with a number of other volunteers for Day #1 of this month-long trail-clearing effort.

Today the Trailbuilders returned for Day #2 of the Islip Ridge Trail maintenance effort, a day which is fortunately at least 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the first day. Day #1 had been gruesomely hot with dried-out Trailbuilders dropping like flies from the heat, a bucket of fun that I had some how managed to escape participating in, alas.

The history of the Islip Ridge Trail has its start with the Trailbuilders, details of which can be found here on the Los Angeles Times article which shows a completion date of 23/Sep/1990. The trail itself is awesome, it walks through micro climates from desert to meadow, and offers vistas looking South and East far off in to the distance.

The day began early in an effort to avoid some of the heat. Bron and Johnathan left the San Gabriel Mountains Gateway Information Center before 6:30 in the morning and headed up the canyons to the Rincon Fire Station where tools and equipment were collected, after which they headed up in to the Crystal Lake Recreation Area and the trailhead of Islip Ridge.

Ben from the Trailbuilders came to pick Bryan and myself up, tossing our packs and equipment in to the back of the pickup and then heading off to the Gateway. We got there in time to wait in the shade and tell improbable lies about ourselves for about 40 minutes before our 8:00 a.m. departure time arrived. Promptly at 8:00 we climbed in to our vehicles and followed Bron and Johnathan up the mountain.

There were 11 volunteers, all together though I counted badly and only informed our Angeles Dispatch Overlords over the radio that there were 8 of us, a count that got even more inaccurate when Scott, one of Johnathan' s friends, joined us at the trailhead. D'Oh! (Please don't tell Angeles Dispatch otherwise I'll get a much-deserved, very stern talking to.)

I need to be more careful in my counts since an accurate count is a safety issue in the event of a land slide or other problem which makes a search and retrieval effort less strenuous for the rescue workers and avalanche rescue dogs which have to reassemble and count the widely dispersed parts to see if they've got them all.

We stopped by Rincon, picked up what few tools that Bron and Johnathan did not get yet (they left us a note!) and then after we got what we needed for the day we loaded back in to our vehicles and headed up to the trailhead. The trailhead is actually at the Crystal Lake parking lot, one of 5 lots just above the actual lake.

At the trailhead we got our daily safety run-down which included a review of the flora and fauna that constitute a safety or health hazard, covering what we could expect to encounter while volunteering. At the same time we had a quick review of the day's Project Activity Level (PDF file) which included the need to stop all chainsaw activity promptly at 13:00 today.

One of the hazardous plants that we would encounter today included Poodle-dog bush which Bron had managed to get involved with on Day #1 of this month-long adventure. Yikes! And as I type this up I see I managed to get some on my left knee. Bother!

We then collected our equipment, clothes, and tools and set our boots on the trail. Fortunately the really heavy equipment -- three chainsaws -- had already gone on ahead which left us late arrivals to carry less heavy things like safety chaps, helmets, wedges, medical kits, fire extinguishers, rope, McLeod tools, shovel, a couple of loppers, and perhaps a Pulaski.

The sign at the trailhead needs to be repaired. It's very annoying but literally everything gets spray painted up there eventually, rocks, trees, the ground, buildings, signs, everything winds up getting spray painted, and the awesome trailhead sign (photograph offered below) needs to be cleaned up again. The Trailbuilder's email address should be added to the sign, actually.

While hiking up we spread out along the trail. I'm the only one with a radio certified safe to contact our Dispatch Overlords however the rest of the team had personal short-range radios which helps considerably to keep the Trailbuilders safe and secure in the knowledge that we can call each other for assistance if needed. Eventually every long-time Trailbuilder needs a radio and needs formal training, but for now it's good to know that relays can be set up to call for help!

Along the way we crossed a large number of already bucked trees, downed trees across the trail which had been sectioned up and are awaiting a fairly large number of young volunteers expected on Day #4 of this effort when the bucked sections will be removed from the trail and the trail generally cleared and re-opened.

We must have crossed at least 30 bucked trees by the time we joined up with Bron and Johnathan and the start of our chainsaw effort for the day, about one and a half mile up the trail.

Johnathan! It was great seeing Johnathan on the trail again, he's looking more rugged and physically fit than ever before, wearing safety fire clothes that can be seen from helicopters for rescue or identification, if needed. Trailbuilder Johnathan has been volunteering with horses and mules for years and has extensive experience doing this kind of heavy and difficult volunteer work so it was great seeing Johnathan again and wonderful having another highly trained and qualified sawyer in the team. It meant that all three saws had fully trained and safety qualified operators that could get a lot of trees bucked by the 13:00 PAL quitting time.

After joining up with the lead crews, some of the volunteers spread out below and started clearing the worse of the trail sections that are overgrown with brush, cutting back brush and tree limbs and removing plants from the trail. Other volunteers headed up the trail and leap-frogged from downed tree to downed tree, removing limbs from trees, clearing out safe standing areas for sawyers, assisting with pounding wedges, swamping out from under and around the sawers, and keeping an eye out for hazards.

With each work site a fire extinguisher, medical kit, and at least one shovel was stationed along with the usual repair tool box, safety chaps, helmet, goggles, ear protectors, and face mask. The Trailbuilders take safety very seriously, and the safety clothes and equipment that get carried up are well maintained and inspected and I think that the Trailbuilders go way beyond the minimal safety requirements and protocols -- which is good since we work hard in heat, and exhaustion can cause poor judgment.

Come to think of it, if you look at the Trailbuilder gasoline and oil containers, they're all safety containers as well, complete with "child resistant" and "spill resistant" caps and such. Ever since I've been volunteering I've been struck with how professional the organization is, and the fact speaks-up with all the little safety things as well as the major safety things. In-the-field training in the use of tools and such is also offered with an eye toward safety first, and if one steps back and takes a look at the Trailbuilders, one gets a renewed sense of just exactly how professional the organization is.

As we climbed past the carved wooden two mile marker along the trail, I noted a number of wood-and-metal retaining walls that were built by a contractor crew under the lead of a man named Martin about five years ago. If you look at the walls (photographs offered in the list below) these retaining walls are pretty neat, treated wood set in to metal frames with rebar and such, enough that large sections of the trail will not need to be rebuilt for decades to come.

Around 11:30 or so we heard over the radio that a fire had broken out on Glendora Mountain Road (also see this web page for more background on GMR) so we looked generally East and South and watched smoke climb up over Glendora Mountain and start to settle in to the San Gabriel Valley, slowly filling the canyons with smoke.

From what we could hear, a vehicle crash and ejection "over the side" started the fire with the vehicle occupants climbing out of the vehicle and making it to the road once again on their own without assistance. The fire effort launched off in one Hell of a quick, from what I could hear, and as the day wore on we could see the smoke stop billowing up after the fire was stopped while the smoke continued to spread out, all the way from Walnut, Californ ia to the ridge-line of Angeles Crest Highway.

Yikes! White smoke so we knew the fire was being dropped on, but it still gets one's attention when smoke starts heading toward you no matter how far off the source is.

We continued to work on bucking downed trees until Johnathan and Scott finished bucking the last tree just a couple of minutes before the 13:00 ending time. The heat of the day was still climbing so it was a welcome relief to set down our tools and start packing things away. By that time I had drunk 6 containers of water with only 2 containers remaining and was still looking at two and a quarter miles of trail ahead of me, but fortunately almost all of that was down hill so I wasn't unduly concerned about running out of water.

The volunteer crews in the higher altitudes started working our way down the trail, stopping at a place with shade for a quick lunch. I walked a bit further down the trail and collected Trailbuilder Mike and another volunteer who had managed to clear and re-work a long section of trail just below where we stopped for lunch, and they brought up their long tools and joined us for a break.

Right below that point there's a wooden bench that was created by Bron's son in years past, and the bench itself is still in good condition, affording a nice place to rest while gazing far off in to the Southern canyons and valleys. It must have been twice awesome before the Curve Fire when the trees were thick and covered in leaves and needles and there was extensive shade all along the trail.

After a brief lunch we picked up our stuff and continued on down the mountain, spreading out once again along the trail. Horribly I found that my radio battery had become as exhausted as I was so I turned the radio off and held what small charge that remained in abeyance against an emergency when I might conceivably eek out a low-power cry for help just in case a bear leaped out of the brush and seized me by the already-torn britches (happens all the time.)

On the way down we passed the 1 mile marker which consists of a short piece of tree limb (about 7 inches long) nailed to a dead tree vertically so that the small piece of wood looked a bit like the number 1. That right there is a high technology mile marker! One could stare at the thing and have no idea why someone would nail that piece of wood there, and I admit that I was wondering until one of the volunteers informed me that that was the 1 mile marker.

Many of us looked at the mile marker and maybe some of us were amused as much as I was. Regardless Tom started heading down the mountain at a good pace, and Bron and Eddie were already at the trailhead parking lot so I started heading down at a fairly good rate, hoping to get to some water on ice before it could all melt in the still-growing heat of the afternoon.

The remaining mile hike down the trail went quickly since it's all down hill. I drank off the last of my water along the way and, upon stumbling off of the trail and on to the asphalt parking lot, I dropped my pack and tools and headed straight for the ice chest.

After messily chugging two more bottles like a starving wolf devouring a kitten, I thought about throwing it all up but managed to convince my guts to hang on to it all long enough to down a third bottle. A few questionable hick-ups later one of the volunteers offered me another bottle of cold water which I took and, sitting down in the shade, slowly sipped in an effort to look at least a little civilized.

Just about everybody was back down off of the trail by then, and ice cold watermelon was cut up and handed out by Bron who had brought the treat as a welcome reward for a long, hot, difficult day which saw a great many trees bucked. I used an empty water bottle as a pillow and laid out flat on the asphalt and had a nap. Bron threatened everyone with a long knife and demanded to know if anyone wanted another slice of watermelon so I had to mutter, "You call that a knife?" in my heat-stroke delirium from there on the pavement.

After all of the volunteers had made it to the Crystal Lake parking lot and the trailhead, we rested and drank water and watermelon, told more outrageous and improbable lies about ourselves, congratulated each other on how awesome we are (and we are) then we got in to our vehicles and most of us headed down the mountain.

Ben, Lou, Bryan and I headed toward the Visitor Center to return a chainsaw that Bryan had fully repaired, rebuilt, cleaned up, and tuned up, and while Ben and I talked with the Nameless Orange Kitty, Bryan tested the saw before returning it, a good job completed in over 7 hours of unpaid volunteer chainsaw repair work. Great job!

We said "good bye" to the Nameless Orange Kitty and headed down the mountain, driving past a fairly large crowd of forest visitors parked along Highway 39 where large numbers of people were camping, cooking dinner, getting cool in the San Gabriel River, and availing themselves of all the hiking opportunities and other recreation available in the canyon.

The narrow section of Highway 39 where a Caltrans worker had been lost over the side had seen some extensive and awesome repair work, and I had asked Ben if we might stop long enough to examine the engineering. When we reached the work site we pulled over and parked then got out to examine the work. It was very interesting, at least for me, but soon enough we packed back in to the pickup and continued on down the mountain.

Stopping off at the Rincon Fire Station, we put away the tools and equipment we had carried down and I attempting to inform our Dispatch Overlords that we were finished for the day however our Overlords never responded. Strange. After several attempts I decided I would call them via telephone so we piled in to Ben's pickup and drove to the base of the mountain back to the Gateway Visitor Center.

Once again I attempted to contact Dispatch via radio and did not get a response. Well, my battery had been complaining about being low on power so I again returned the radio to my holster and decided I would wait until getting to a phone.

Abandoning Trailbuilder Lou at the Gateway Center to fend for himself the rest of us drove along Sierra Madre toward where the Glendora Mountain Road fire was, located somewhere above Big Dalton and the Monroe Truck Trail. By that time (approaching 18:00 O'clock) there was no more visible smoke which made us all happy.

While driving East our Dispatch Overlords gave me two calls wanting to know what our status was. Since it was approaching 18:00 they wanted to know whether we had made it down the mountain safely. Twice more I attempted to contact them and failed which worried me some since I didn't want Angeles to break out the San Dimas Mountains Rescue Team which would have been expensive.

Upon reaching home I again got on the radio and this time was able to get our Dispatch Overlords to respond, letting them know we were finished for the day, "all 8 of us." (I again lied about how many we were since I did not want Angeles to know we had picked up three more volunteers some how along the way today.)

Joyness! After Dispatch confirmed checking us off his list I informed Dispatch that I was very appreciative of the fact that Angeles Dispatch watches over us volunteers and keeps us safe to which Angeles confirmed that he was happy to do so. That's a fact, the police, fire crews, U. S. Forest Service, and all the volunteers have a quality, professional team of people at Dispatch which provides a solid safety net which surrounds us all.

Adventure! Excitement! Exercise! Sunburn, blusters, scrapes, Poodle-dog and the occasional bruise, all good stuff on a Saturday! It sure beats sitting in an office like I do most of the week writing extremely complicated telecommunications and robotics embedded software for a heartless mega-multinational conglomerate which does not appreciate my obvious genius.

The trail work that volunteers do lasts for generations, and though we're often anonymous, hikers and the Forest Service greatly appreciate the work that volunteers do which makes awesome days like today "awesome times twelve", as they call it these days.

Day #3 is coming up on the 7th of August and that day will be an effort much like today's with more downed trees across the trail getting bucked up and left for later removal. Day #4 is coming up on the 21st of August which will see younger volunteers join the effort and the already-bucked sections will be strong-armed off of the trail while the trail itself will have brush cut back and plants removed.

By the time the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders are done, the entire length of the trail from Crystal Lake's parking lot all the way to Islip Ridge should be clean and re-open, a totally awesome trail.

Come join us! Email me if you have any questions about volunteering with us and I will get back to you as quickly as I can.