The snow is still in patches under the trees and in the shady spots, but what is on the trail is mud, lots of mud. This was a WTA work party instead of a hike. Today our work party began to tackle the River Cutoff. We had several projects, drainage, and 3 logs across the trail. Our crew, under the direction of sawyer Rick, had the fun job of crosscutting the logs and removing the pieces from the trail. For crosscutting, you don't just grab a saw and start in, there are many safety rules, log analysis, and workspace clearing to be done. Once Rick had decided where to make the cuts, hardest cut first, we cleared a work space and unwrapped the saw from its protective sheath. We traded off the sawing, part of us took turns on the saw and the rest worked on drainage. Then we switched for the next cut. Once the log is cut, it must be removed from the trail. This involves a muddy butt for the ride home. You sit, push the log with your feet, and roll it off the trail. If you hike this you will see the fresh cut logs. We learned all about kerf, binds, bucking saws vs felling saws and undercuts. The first log the saw got caught in a split and we had to saw the saw out with another saw. The next log went easy, but the last one we had to walk away from. It was split and Rick decided we needed 3 cuts instead o 2, so we started one on the uphill side of the trail. As it was sawed it kept binding up. Rick said it was now in a side bind, the kerf (the spot in the log where you are cutting) was uneven and he was not going to continue with the cutting. It needs a chainsaw, which the park ranger will have to do. By this time it was time to head out, but we had cut 2 logs and fixed some drainage issues by digging a trench and taking out the berms on the downhill side of the trail so the water will slope off. There is still more work to do but it was a great day to be out in the woods. 

Hey, it's me again. Sorry - don't mean to be cluttering up the site with another Lord Hill report, but wanted to let the regulars know that the Midway is snow-free and good to go. I cleared the north section to the Viewpoint on Tuesday, and finished up the south section today.

It was mostly twigs and branches, but I did have to cut and wrestle a couple large blowdowns aside. Trimmed a few obnoxious low-hanging branches, but most of them I just re-arranged. Left a couple new step-overs - but don't think of them as obstacles, think of them as bike/horse barriers. Also, just below the Viewpoint, there is now a tree leaning over the trail. Easy enough to scoot around for now, but I think the next windstorm will bring it down the rest of the way. I'll wait til then to decide what to do with it...

Anyway. Wanted to get 'er all cleaned up for the weekend crowd, 'cause now that the snow is finally gone, I was going to try to convince "mato" to go on a real hike this weekend. We'll see...

Oh yeah - on the way back I was serenaded by a paloma down by the old bucket loader. Love that sound! (reminds me of my (short) stay down in SoCal years ago...)

Sorry, no pics today - kinda covered that on Tuesday.

Didn't know you could see all these from the Viewpoint, did you ? ...