These volunteers are the unsung heroes of the local trails: They improve and maintain trails by building bridges and retaining walls, posting signs and mile markers, and keeping the trails cleared of debris. In some cases the debris is a massive dead tree that has fallen across the trail (a "deadfall"), or rocks and boulders that have been shed from the crumbly mountains above. In other cases it's a large and sometimes unfriendly plant that can block a hiker's path. On this day, there were groups removing the deadfalls toward the top of the trail, and groups removing rocks from a slide in the middle of it.
The trails around Crystal Lake have been plagued by deadfalls resulting from the huge Curve Fire in 2002. A tree that burns in a forest fire may leave a dead trunk that remains standing for many years, until it rots to the point of collapse and finally, inexorably, topples over. When a mammoth trunk falls across a trail, a hiker has to choose whether to climb over or under the tree, if possible, or if not, to depart the trail to make a detour around it. Either way, it makes a trail harder and more time-consuming to follow. The Trailbuilders remove each deadfall by tagging it and and eventually returning to dispatch it by chainsaw. The only remaining deadfalls now on the Windy Gap Trail are a few near the very top of the trail.
Rocks are another issue. They fall constantly on the trails as the weather freezes, thaws and deteriorates a mountain throughout the year until parts of it break off and roll on down the canyons. Sometimes the accumulation of rocks simply makes a trail a rough and tricky prospect to cross. But a rock slide can obliterate a trail's retaining walls, or obstruct it so badly a detour can't be made around it.
On our way up the trail, large rocks were being removed by hand from a portion that crossed a retaining wall; on our way back down, the trail had been cleared (see photo below). So many rocks had fallen down the canyon that the retaining wall is barely visible.
Keeping the trails clear and usable might seem like a thankless task, but as hikers, trust us, it's anything but.
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1 comment:
This is very well written. The San Gabriel Mountains grow on average some 2 inches every year, there is volcanism involved yet much of it is tectonic uplift and from the Crystal Lake Visitor Center's parking lot looking generally North and a bit East one can see two halfs of the San Andreas Fault grinding against each other, a verticle seam of different colored rock.
It makes for trail building and for road building to be an endless, never-ending effort, so much so that Caltrans laments the very existance of Highway 39 which goes through the San Gabriel River's alluvial plane and then climbs through all that friable San Gabriel granite that keeps coming down even as the mountain itself continues to rise.
The Trailbuilders also work on East Fork trail which goes from Heaton Flats to beyond the famous Bridge To No Where. As the mountain rises under the river, the river itself digs deeper to the point where the actual sea level of the river remains the same over the decades and centuries but the canyon walls continue to rise. As it rises the bed of the river changes, making the trail get relocated from time to time. Infact parts of East Fork Trail are under a few inches of water right now. :)
More information about Crystal Lake can be found at the "official" Crystal Lake web site http://www.CrystalLake.Name/
Thanks! Great meeting you on the trail! Windy Gap is special. :)
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