Dec 1-2 Cook Springs Trail Trip
| Date: | Dec 1-2 2007 |
| Trail: | Cook Springs Trail |
| Volunteers: | 12 |
| Volunteer Hours: | 140 |
All, 12 diehard Ventanaphiles (David Knapp, Betsy MacGowan, Greg Minter, Morgan Stryker, John Siddall, Salem Magarian, Steve Benoit, Esperanza Hernandez, John Kasik, Dave Nelson, Jean LeBlanc, and Eric Brazil) blindly believing weather reports of sunny skies and cool temperatures, were cruelly subjected to the forces of mother nature as can only be experienced in the Ventana. Though we started under sunny skies, in less than an hour, we were both snowed and hailed on! Fortunately, the collective mind power of the trail crew prevailed, and the skies cleared for the rest of the day and on into the night.
The Saturday night potluck was a scrumptious buffet of culinary delights previously only dreamed of in the backcountry. Amongst other things that I am probably forgetting, there were homemade tortillas together with Esperanza's Carne de Esperanza, Brie with pine nuts and sun dried tomatoes, an assortment of artisan cheeses and salami, but before I forget, we had fondue freshly fabricated from fromage and chardonay. Fondue. Fondue. Fondue. We had roast rosemary and juniper berry pork tenderloin, roasted red pepper tapenade, smoked salmon, homemade oatmeal and raisin cookies, Biscotti, an International selection of wines, including: a California Chardonnay, an Italian Pinot Grigio, a Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon, a French Red Rhone, a Santa Ynez Zin, a Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon from Lone Madrone, a Malbec from Argentina, some Port, some Caol Il, another whiskey, and some 23 year old rum.
Though the temperature was 30F at 6pm, and 27 was the low, Betsy's hot water bottle trick kept most of us quite warm, though several also used the chemical handwarmers that hunters use. It snowed just a bit overnight, and at 7am, it looked like Sunday was going to be sunny, if not warm. And then it got cloudy, and windy too. We worked for about 3 hours, mostly discussing if this percieved moisture was due to being in a cloud, or was it mist, or aggressive mid air condensation, or just a figment of our collective imaginations. Unable to agree, Mother Nature finally made it clear that it was in fact rain and tortuous wind that we were experiencing, so we headed back to our cars, imagining what it would be like to be warm again.
Even with the weather issues, with 12 people we really got a lot of trail cleared I would say that we cleared about 300 feet of the Gamboa, plus about 75 feet of tread on the Gamboa, and removed about 5 logs from the trail. On the NCRT we cleared about 150 feet of trail and did about 50 feet of tread.
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| cook-sprin |
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