Coyote Springs trail work

Day 1

Our crew flew out of McCall on McCall Air in a single plane requiring two trips. Due to requiring two trips, transportation time was a cumulative 2.5 hours. Both loads were on the ground at Cold Meadows airstrip by around 9:30. Clear weather and smooth flying made seeing all that rugged country a real treat.

We added two more logs, each closer to 6” diameter to create a dry but still a little precarious bridge.

Continuing up #044, it was hot. Cave Creek is not readily accessible from the trail, so it was with some relief that we finally reached Coyote Springs and found water flowing. Excellent campsite at the Telephone Booth.

Special note: The current trail does not always follow the trail shown on the USGS map. This was the case for much of the way. Please refer to the provided maps or gpx files for accurate trail locations.

Day 2

After a little light rain the next morning, we headed out on the Farrow Mountain trail #168. Near the saddle immediately above camp, most of our group did a quick hike up Point 8900 for the view.
Then we continued on the trail, now clearing occasional trees. Again, the trail shown on the map is not where the trail currently resides. As an example, the map shows the trail on the west side of Farrow Mountain. It is now on the east side.

When we got to Twin Lakes (specifically, Lake 8302), we set up camp and took a break. This lake is quite shallow and not terribly cold.

After our break, we continued clearing trail on #168 as it headed east, then after the junction with #140 we headed north to the highpoint on the ridge at 45.2772, -114.7960.  Here we cached most of the tools and hiked back to camp. This is looking north from the cache to Cottonwood Butte.

Back in camp we had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. One crew member was off on a nature walk when he called for help. He felt something sharp in his boot, but when he tried to remove the boot to inspect the intruder, the boot resisted and the pain went way up. On further inspection, he found something sticking out of the boot sole. As it turned out, what he saw was the business end of a 2.5” sewing needle. The ‘eye’ end had gone through the boot, through the insole, through the sock, and quite deep in the space between the bones in his forefoot. Luckily, he had a Leatherman with pliers, which allowed one of our doctors to pull the needle out. We think the unlikelihood of finding a needle in the middle of the Frank Church Wilderness may prove there is life on other planets.

Day 3

After an even lighter morning sprinkle, we packed up camp and hiked the approximately two miles to our tool cache. Back at camp we had found a giant nail, so along the way, we performed a caveman repair to the trail sign at the junction of Trails #140 and 168 by pounding the nail with a big rock (the single-bit was in the tool cache ahead of us).

Returning to our packs, we continued north on Trail #168 past Cottonwood Butte to a trail junction not shown on the map at 45.29305° -114.79502°. This trail, which appears more like the main trail than does #168, goes over the saddle immediately north of Cottonwood Butte and apparently on down to Lake 8682.

Note the whitebark pines.

Back on the correct trail, we continued north with only occasional work required. This is going really well!
Then somewhere around 45.3097, -114.7941 (I did not waypoint it) we ran into the edge of the burn. Hell hath arrived! With no shade, it was very hot work. Here is an example, with a Before shot.

And an After shot.

One of our three teams claims over 400 trees/logs removed. Much of the time, we did not have to saw anything, just dragging pecker poles off the trail, breaking them off, or doing ‘pole vaults’ by standing them on end and tipping them over. But there was definitely sawing going on. And we did have 2 or 3 occasions to use the crosscut.

As the afternoon wore on, we started working our way down the real descent off the ridge (again, the trail is not where it is shown on the map). As our water supply dwindled and the afternoon got late, we finally had to call it a day, cache some of the tools, and head for Black Lake.

Before (after clicking for the bigger version, look especially at the rat's nest in the distance).

After.

Going to Black Lake may have been a mistake. It was about a 1700’ drop, and tomorrow was going to start with climbing back up all that elevation through the downfall. In retrospect, it might have saved us some trouble to double back and camp at Basin Lake, and on already-cleared trail. But the words “Black Lake” held a certain attraction.

Furthermore, the pecker pole conditions only got worse as we went downhill. Climbing over, under, and through these damnable things with full packs (and now, dry mouths) was torture. And what might have been a quick walk certainly was not.

Day 4

I spent the night thinking about all that downfall and worrying that we would not be able to reach the finish of our project, which I considered to be Black Lake. Rough night.
When we woke up, the valley was filled with smoke. Expecting a really long day with heat, we all got started extra early, on our feet at 7am. The plan for today was for one team to work up the trail from the bottom at Black Lake, one team to return to the tool cache and work their way down, and one team to attack the worst section of pecker pole, which was a flattish half-mile of trail about 1200’ up the slope. All teams to be back in camp by 3PM to avoid the worst of the heat.

With everybody working at break-neck pace, the upper team had visual on the middle team by about 10AM. By 11, we had met up.

Then came some challenging crosscut work on several very large snags laying in or across the tread. If you want to roll a 24” tree trunk that is 30’ long, it’s helpful to have the quad power of four cyclists. In addition, a little crafty engineering and some really good luck.
All teams met up at about 1:30PM.

In addition to clearing the lower trail, the lower team also re-channeled a creek that had turned a long section of tread into a slickery-rock, boggy mess through stickery currant bushes that obscured your view of your feet.
We got back to camp, a little early even, exhausted but very satisfied with the feat we had accomplished. We celebrated by adding a few more logs to the shaky ‘bridge’ over Peak Creek, the creek at the inlet to Black Lake.

Day 5

We again woke to smoke. And again shooting for an early start to avoid the heat, we were fully loaded by about 7:30 on the trail from Black Lake back to Cold Meadows, #238. The trail had been cleared by an ITA crew last year, so we were hoping for an easy hike with minimal work. We had only walked about 100 yards when those hopes were quashed by a couple trees needing a Silky.

Farther up the hill, some of it was quite tricky.

Then followed a series of about 10 trees needing challenging crosscut work on a very steep hillside.

But it made for good pictures.

Knowing we had a long way to go to Cold Meadows, I finally had to cap our work at 10AM. We had cleared it about halfway down the west side of the ridge to the west of Black Lake, at 45.33495° -114.83429°.

After that, as we walked back to the airstrip, we crossed about 100 trees in the trail of various sizes. It was hard to pass these trees by, but the hands of the clock were moving.

We're back! When we got back to Cold Meadows, we had done two and a half hours of trail work, then hiked with full packs for another six hours. Hot and tired.

Special note: Along the way we ran into two 75-year-old backpackers who were doing this loop specifically because they had learned that ITA was clearing/had cleared the trail. They expressed their appreciation, and we asked them to join ITA (you should too!) In addition, the wilderness register at Cold Meadows indicated there had been six other backpack parties in the area over the summer!

Day 6

Cold Meadows earned its name today, with frost on the ground and us in our puffies, waiting for the planes.

The flight home was very smooth but very smoky with poor visibility.

See Tuesday Dave's excellent photos

• Episode 1
• Episode 2
• Episode 3
• Episode 4
• Episode 5
• Summary

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