VWA March 14-15, 2009 trip

Gentle readers and esteemed colleagues: 11 trail crew adventurers were surprised to see over 1 foot of snow in places on the North Coast Ridge Trail, the Carrizo Trail, and on the way down to Cook Springs. Fortunately, we were working mostly on the Gamboa trail, which had no snow that I saw. So, with various implements of trail building, we were able to dig out paths in the snow and spots to sleep. Cook Springs itself had a few inches of snow, but only one member chose to sleep directly on it - and he was fine. The rest of us were able to either find clear spots or dig out a place to sleep. The Saturday night potluck was a huge success with a varied assortment of breads, shallots, crackers, cheeses, salamis, cheese fondue, olives, oysters, sardines, pesto, cookies, tortellini, chocolate cake and several things that I'm sure I'm missing. In any case, no one went to bed hungry on Saturday Night.

Lest someone say that we did not earn our dinner, let me describe the work that went on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, the Saw Team sawed up about 5 logs on the Gamboa Trail, about 100 feet of treadwork was completed, and now the Gamboa is wilderness freeway from the NCRT Junction to about 1/2 mile from Trail Springs - about 500ft of thick brush was removed. On our way down to Cook Springs on Saturday, I realized that Mother Nature does not want to make either of the two paths down to Cook Springs easily passable, because both ways were impeded by fallen trees. So, Sunday morning was spent clearing 5 trees off of the trails down to Cook Springs. This leads me to describe one of the best parts of working on a trail crew - knowing that the trail ahead needs work, and then finding it already done. (The second best part of being on the trail crew is walking back to camp through trail that you've already cleared - because you remember how bad it was just to get to the work site. Tied for second place is the potluck!) We then followed up with some clearing some spots that were left to do between the Carrizo and the Gamboa junctions and took a break at the Gamboa Junction.

In the middle of solving the problems of the world and having lunch at the NCRT/Gamboa junction, it was suggested that it wouldn't take long to restore the correct trail head for the Gamboa. One of the trees that burned in 1999 (my guess) fell right down the trail many years ago and the actual entrance became overgrown quite quickly - leading to the creation of the only trail head that I've known in the last 5 years. So, working furiously, we were able to clear the path from the NCRT to the Gamboa - about 100 yards. Once we had done so, it was clear that we had done the right thing. We found the remains of a 4x4 signpost - probably the old sign to the trail head that burned. The tread was still there, the slope was much better, and several of the trees and ceanothus had grown up enough that there was shade in places - in stark contrast to the replacement trail head which was a short gravelly zig-zag, with no shade and an insane grade. It will need a bit of work in the future, but right now, it's a better trail than most places in the Ventana and certainly better than it was before. A special thanks goes out to the whole trail crew for coming up with the idea, discussing it, and executing it flawlessly. The old trail head was removed, and the new trail head is about 40 feet past the "old" trail head.