sign installation

"But love of the wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need - if only we had eyes to see."

-Edward Abbey

I didn't know how big the holes in the sign were so I brought a few different bolts, screws and bits. I put the draw knife in the photo because it is another very fun tool I used for the first time this summer which we use to cut bark off a log. You hold the handles and pull the blade towards you which peels the bark away, it's really fun and satisfying! Conner and Cara had already debarked the tree I was going to use and they did it with a shovel so no draw knife was needed for this project.

 Here is the old sign...hardware was missing and the signs were just laying on the ground.

 Here's the log Conner and Cara had felled and debarked for the post, it's pretty tall.

You can kind of tell from this photo that Cara and Conner had already scored in spaces for the signs so they sit better on the post and point the correct ways. I put a bit in the auger that matched the holes in the sign and bored some holes into the post. This was really fun, what a great tool that auger is...you put pressure on the doorknob looking part and then spin the handle-crank with the other hand to drill a hole.

There's a hole!

Once I had my holes in there I could screw the signs on. Conner told me later that it's not too hard to screw the screws in by hand, using the auger to bore holes wasn't completely necessary. But because I hadn't had a chance to use this tool and I wasn't sure if I would be using the bolts or screws I put the holes in. 

I put some nails in the bottom to hopefully make it stay in the ground even better. I used a rock as my hammer since the weight of the auger and hardware was already a good amount and I didn't want to carry something extra. 

I dug a hole (2 feet deep) and then filled it in with rocks and then with dirt, and then put more rocks on top.

 the old sign situation

 dug a hole...

 put the post in and filled the hole with rocks...

 then dirt...

then put more rocks on top and around the post!

tah-dah!

Here's a diagram from the Forest Service Trail Construction and Maintenance Notebook illustrating what I did:

The Wilderness Act states Wilderness Areas are places that have "opportunities for primitive recreation" and are also undeveloped and in 'contrast to those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape"

From a Forest Service Document about Wilderness policy: "We minimize the presence of modern artifacts of civilization, such as signs, bridges, structures, and technology; large groups; unnecessary managerial presence; and conflicting uses that tend to interfere with one’s free and independent response to nature."

In the Hoover Wilderness, we only have wood signs. We opt for the natural material and do not put milage on the signs to keep things more wild. Different Wilderness Areas interpret the Act differently, the sign in this photo is in Yosemite where they use metal signs and put milage on the signs. Yosemite is also the 3rd largest Wilderness Area in California (Death Valley and Sequoia Kings-Canyon are the largest) and have a lot more visitation which is likely one of the reasons they use metal...it won't have to be maintained much once installed.

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”    

― John Muir, Our National Parks

Something I do pretty much every day I'm out is break down or "naturalize" illegal campfire rings. In the Hoover there are certain lakes you can never have fires at, other areas where we have elevational fire restrictions and in ALL areas of our Wilderness they are not allowed closer than 100 feet from trail or water. Currently, we are in fire restrictions in the backcountry so no one is allowed to have a fire in the backcountry in our district right now, we only allow stoves with on/off switches. If you want a campfire in our district you have to go to a developed car camping camp ground. It's pretty common for much of the Sierra Nevada to be in that type of restriction during the summer months. If we find campfire rings in the backcountry that WOULD be legal IF we were not in fire restrictions, we generally leave them so they can be used the next winter/spring when fire restriction in the backcountry is lifted. So I don't knock down every ring I find.  I spread the ashes, toss the rocks away and cover it up with some dirt! Simple enough but sometimes can take awhile especially if there's lot's of ashes and/or rocks. This one pictured was at least 10 buckets full of ashes before I got level with the ground.

Here's a weird one....my co-ranger Cara was in this drainage the other week and found graffiti on a tree (who DOES that?!). I was assigned the drainage she had that past week so I took a little hatchet and chopped off all these folks' names.

 

I write out incident reports for the illegal fires rings and other stuff (abandoned property I found last month, evidence of people cutting switchbacks, used toilet paper laying around etc etc). These get entered in some database so they can see where troublesome areas are and what needs to be considered (ie: the fact that it is legal to bury your used toilet paper when it really should not be).

 

When you bury your toilet paper, animals come and dig it up, yuck.

 

Monday I spent some hours lopping out a section of trail we call "the tropics" it's a never ending battle. I started work at 7 to try and beat the heat but it was still super hot

 unnamed pond north of Robinson Lakes

 

Little Slide Canyon and "The Hulk" a 1,000' beast with climbing routes

4th of July

So this past week we spent the week out of the field and in town for the 4th of July which is a very big deal in Bridgeport. This tiny town, population 575 explodes when pretty much everyone from town and hundreds from out of town come in to see the parade, fireworks, greased pole climbing contest, watermelon eating contest, mud volleyball, rodeo and more. It was good timing in regards to the mosquito hatch.....the bugs were pretty horrendous the past week in the backcountry.

 For the float we dressed up as different users of the Wilderness (backpacker, trail crew, bird watcher, ranger, fisherman)

 Here's the float!

Our big hit was the crosscut saw, people loved it!

Next to the courthouse in town there were street vendors with booths set up and we had a booth that we manned for the weekend. The entire weekend (booth and float) were Wilderness50 themed for us. The 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act is a big deal and it was neat to be in a town where we had a chance to publicly celebrate it! Here's a little video of things from this week. I need to learn to hold my phone upright, sideways made for some warped video but it's still fun.

Back into the field this week!

Quota season

“All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.” 

-Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River

Friday we started our trail quota season which runs until September 15th. All overnight Wilderness visitors need a permit to spend the night/s in our Wilderness year-round, but in quota season we have limits on how many total people go in for overnight trips (day hikers don't need permits here) at certain trailheads each day because it's the busy season and there's a lot of impact. The permits help us keep track of what areas are getting what amount of use so we can hopefully hone in and focus on those spots. Being able to prove how much users we have could also give us good arguments for hopefully acquiring more budget and justifying jobs like mine. It would also give us a plan of action if your mom calls us to say you never came home…we could use the locations on the permit to lay out a search and rescue. I always try to ask people I see on the trail where they are headed so I can also have this information in case I end up being the last person someone on the trail sees before getting lost. 

During the busy summer months, most Sierra Nevada Wilderness areas have trailhead quotas. Many places with quotas have a certain amount of permits you can reserve ahead of time (we start taking permit reservations on March 1st but every district and Forest is different just like every areas quota season varies a little) and then half we hold (this varies from Forest to Forest, some places have 70% reservable and 30% walk-in) for first come first serve visitors the day of (the overnight quota numbers vary from about 8-100 people on our trailheads). So if you call us and all the permits are reserved, you can still show up and probably get one of the first come first serve/walk-in permits. We and many other ranger stations in the Sierras have a line at the door in the summer mornings of people trying to get one of those walk-in permits so come early!  These quotas help us minimize impact as laid out by law in the Wilderness Act so that our Wilderness is "protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable" as well as provide "outstanding opportunities for solitude."

Interestingly, not ALL Wilderness areas require permit for overnight travel....Marble Mountains does not. Also, not ALL Wilderness areas have a quota season....Emigrant Wilderness does not. Sometimes you get a last minute few spare days off and want to do a trip so it's always nice to make yourself aware of places you can go that don't require permits or have quotas. Conversely, there are some places like Desolation Wilderness (it is the most heavily used Wilderness Area per acre in the country) and parts of Inyo National Forest sectioned off as the "Mt Whiney zone" that require permits even for day use! A lot of places in Oregon have self-issued permits at the trailhead where you write it out yourself instead of going into a ranger station or getting it through Recreation.gov.

"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life."

-John Muir

(sorry for weird layout/font/typographic allignment issues, Blogger is driving me nuts...)

So I had my first 4 night hitch over the past weekend. It went well, I got to do a lot of different things. Cleaning up campfires (backcountry ranger secret tip: foil does not burn, it turns into tiny annoying microtrash), talking to visitors focusing on our recent fire restrictions (no campfires in our backcountry for the rest of the summer) and on this weeks upcoming trail quota season, scouting for down trees and other trail issues. I hiked out about 20 pounds in metal grates people bring in to cook over (when we are not in fire restrictions) and never seem to pack out.

I also had the honor of opening a historic backcountry cabin for the season. It was built in the 1944 from native materials and for a long time it was stationed regularly by a ranger. It hasn't really been stationed regularly since the early 2000's but we still stay there sometimes and it's also used by other Forest Service folks…botanists, range people etc. There are some marmots that live under the cabin and they have chewed holes in the floor and pretty much taken over. I measured the holes and took inventory of the tools and hardware in the cabin so we can repair it. I got there thursday night and took off the shutters and opened the windows and then slept on the porch to let it air out over night. I sprayed all the surfaces down with bleach and while wearing one of those respirator masks (because who wants hantavirus). I swept out 6+ dustpans of marmot poop. I also got on the roof and opened the skylights which really makes the cabin feel a lot nicer.

view from the meadows the cabin sits on

lots of marmot poop

the cabin built in 1944

opening the skylights on the roof

When you buck a log, you want to put a wedge in to pry your kerf open. Saturday I went back to a downed tree with a saw I found at the cabin to take it out of the trail's way. 

Despite the fact that I knew this log would have top bind and I put a wedge in, my saw still got pinched! How embarrassing! I put in my axe as a hanging wedge and hammered the other wedge a bunch to try and open the kerf more, to no avail. So I got some rocks and sticks to put under the kerf to use as a fulcrum and used a big stick to to push the log up. This opened the kerf at the top and with the other hand I hammered the wedge in more. With the wedge in more I got the saw out!

I finished the job by underbucking (sawing from underneath, really exhausting!). To avoid the pinching I should have started underbucking sooner or put in more wedges. 

Here is the first cut, complete. The wedge not only opens the kerf but often holds the log together even after the cut is finished. Here the log is still suspended in the air and will not drop until I know the wedge out!

After we make cuts we put some dirt on the cut edges so it's not so blaring and blends in a bit better. The dirt I had was pretty dry but you get the idea.

When I was dropped off at the trail head, the Lead Wilderness Ranger who has worked in this district for 20+ years told me about a great spot that had 360 degree views…he wasn't lying.

I was grateful not only for the views but also for the breeze. On Sunday the mosquitoes really blew up. It was at the point that even while hiking I had a swarm of a dozen or so on me and was hiking with a bug net on. The only solution is to get to a windy spot so when I got here and finally got rid of the buggers I was pretty happy!

“What if a tree fell in the forest and no one knew it's biological name? Did it exist?"
― Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

The other week Connor and I got to make a railing for a bridge in one of the campgrounds. We made the braces out of 2 x 4s and then we felled a little tree for the railing itself. I got to do the tree felling while Connor coached and supervised, I did it all by axe which felt pretty badass. Even though the campground is not in Wilderness we still mostly used traditional tools (mainly the crosscut saw and axe) which is more fun and it's good to practice especially since there are not a ton of blow downs this winter for us to work on. I've learned pretty quick that even little trees are pretty dang heavy. I suggested we drag the entire tree over to our worksite but it became clear that cutting it to size where I felled it was a much better option....don't want to wear yourself out before you've even started the job!

What do you do?

“Switchback"

turn, turn,

and again,

hard scrabble

steep travel

ahead.

― Gary Snyder, The Back Country


So the only question I get asked more than "how did you get that job" is "what do you do." In general that what a lot of this blog is about.  We have a four person trail crew and they handle the bigger trail projects but the rangers do light maintenance too. There's lots that can happen to the trail. Drainage ditches (a little dip that directs water across the trail) and water bars (same idea but instead of a ditch it's a series of rock that run across the trail) get plugged with duff and need to be cleared or else the water might run down the trail. Brush grows in and needs to be cleared. Trees fall blocking the trail. Slough builds up and pushes the trail over. There's a lot more but these are the ones I've dealt with so far this season.

oh no a tree in the trail!

a little sawing and it's all clear!

This one we had to pull the root end of the tree a bit to get it safely down from being hung up on some other trees.

People were cutting around the trail here so we tossed some logs (right side of photo) in the trail people had made to try and keep them on the real trail.

One of my favorite tools is the folding saw. It flips into itself so it's very portable and great for clearing the brushy ladder fuel that gets in the trail's way. Notice how the tree to the right of it does not have any branches sticking into the trail because we cut them out.