Jim and Mike do their own volunteer work for the Sierra Club. These two guys in their mid 70s love to clear trails in the Sierra Ancha mountains. Somehow Winky got hooked up with them and Kadizzle got forced into service. So on several occasions we have gone with them to do trail work. Yesterday we met them at the road leading up to the trail. The road is a disaster, and we ride up to the trial in Jim's 1983 bolt wagon Ford Bronco which is held together with hope and rust. If you took the right ingredients on the ride up to the trailhead you could turn milk into butter from the ride. Kadizzle always wanted to get on the upper side of the steep canyons that host spectacular ruins on Cherry Creed. This trail took us there. The mission was crazy. Jim was obsessed with cutting a path through a huge rotten log. To do this task we had to use a very large buck saw. The Forest Service will not allow chain saws in the wilderness. Four old goats hiked down two miles in very dense brush, then back up.
A highlight of the hike was a nice spotting of a rattlesnake. Kadizzle Must have walked very close to the snake without seeing it. Jim was behind Kadizzle and saw the snake coiled up. The coloration of the rattlesnake was very bright. Got some pictures, but the snake is very hard to see.
Cutting the log was a very difficult task. The log was almost four feet in diameter, rotten, and very heavy. Between cutting and prying away the rot it took us well over an hour to cut the log.
How many times have people hiked and failed to realize what work goes into clearing trails? It is an endless task. The brush grows so quickly.
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