Adopt-A-Trail Reports
3N93 Workday
On Saturday we hit the trail at 8:15am and headed for the gate on 3N14. We arrived at 8:45 and opened the gate. At 9:30 everyone had arrived, prepped for the trail and Nick had a safety meeting. We arrived at the Holcomb Creek crossing at 9:45am. With 24 MJR-ers present, I’d say it was a GREAT turn-out and I thank you all for helping me reach Nick’s goal of 300(+) hours in one day!
We split up into three groups. Doug’s group consisted of Tracy, Stephan and Sonia (karstic), Jeff and Daniel (scubatch), Mitch (great88), Mike (Malachi) and John in his white TJ. Our goal was to stabilize the road bench just past the middle rock garden.
On the way out we were clearing weeds out of the center of the trail as well as trimming intrusive brush and trees growing into the trail.
Jesse, Tori and Julie pushed forward to check out the west end fence. The previous work was still in tact, but the motorcycles were going around it. We put some more fencing in on both sides to at least make it more of a pain for them. I unfortunately did not get any pictures of this work being done. I think a nearby forest ranger distracted my photographer.
Nick’s group, or “the motley crew”, after putting in more fence, tackled two off camber areas. The one closest to the west entrance was not as bad as I somehow remember it being. The crew made short work of leveling, and trying to widen or reinforce the down hill side of the area. I wouldn’t call it “problem solved”, but we gave it the 80% solution.
We needed something to divert the water, hold some kind of a little berm to route the water down the trail instead of over the side continuing to erode it.
Once we moved on from that area, we backtracked to what would turn out to be our biggest project of the day. This off camber area was lengthy and without somehow reinforcing the down hill side, all our work would just wash away in 1 rainfall. Crash and Erik worked hard to get the previously installed “retaining wall” back into place, and improve upon it.
Meanwhile, Ryan took charge of building his own retaining wall of log and stone near the creek. This little 20 foot section was pretty scary to drive through. First he cut logs lying around to make a base, and piled rocks [some quite large] onto the embankment to reinforce the side of the hill.
[photo] Guys lending a hand getting more rocks onto Ryans pass. [please note Cathy bringing her own huge rock to the wall!]
I tell ya, it was a great nine hours on the trail all around. A LOT of work was accomplished, nobody was hurt, and I was able to meet new friends and spend a day on 3n93. That’s better than a day at work anytime.
