January 2016 Projects

Happy New Year, PCT Volunteers!

Rebenching the trail in Dowd Canyon, November 2015

I haven't made posts since last spring, but the Trail Gorillas are gearing up for spring projects in Section E.  Here's some of the latest news:

• Powerhouse Fire:  The Forest Service's closure is still in effect. In the meantime, our SoCal PCTA rep, Anitra Kass, is trying to make a plan with Angeles NF for project access, but:
• The destructive October 15 rain event (up to 3" in a half hr) damaged the trail in the Green Valley area, destroyed miles of the trail south of Hwy 58, and wrecked a lot of the forest access roads that we use. So also, the forest service has to look at the damage in the Powerhouse burn to determine if they'll even grant us work access permissions.  For the destroyed segments up north, the work is far in excess of our volunteer capacity, so we're hoping for help from the BLM. But:
•  Our energetic new Section E Chief, Jim Richter has planned four projects for January. Contact Jim (richterj at vmcmail dot com) to sign up for any of these.  We'll need the help!

January 9 &10 Brushing / treading in Pine Canyon

January 16 &17 Brush and tread on Sawmill Mtn, near Atmore Meadows Road

January 22-24  Cameron Canyon, south of Hwy 58 (mile 558 to 566.5).  Emergency repairs, serious tread work.

January 30 & 31 Dowd Canyon above Green Valley (between San Francisquito & Spunky Canyons), Mile 474 +/- continuation of tread repair

Also, this year PCTA.org improved their volunteer projects schedule page, and Jim has added details for the projects above. This is a great new interface, though it doesn't have an alerts function yet - a suggestion I offered that I hope the PCTA's IT pros can add.  But you can now go there and read the details for Jim's January projects.

Our future local projects, mapped!

On the Green Valley area's storm damage, last month a volunteer crew led by Dave Fleischman tirelessly rebenched and treaded over 1.5 miles of the trail going southbound from San Francisquito Canyon Rd (see photo at top). I helped them on two days, but those guys did some fantastic work.  If you are local and enjoy hiking that segment of trail, now it's like new again, and it awaits you...

Kevin