You met Marvin's trail crew's tools. Marvin and his team were paid construction contractors who were asked to build those wood retainign walls along the last 4 miles of the trail past Smith Saddle. He and his people lived in the wide area across the way from the Rincon Fire Station while they did that paid trail work.
And oh man, hear you about the poison oak! Our volunteer trail crews were on Lower Bear Creek last Saturday, as I mentioned previously in another thread, and at least two of us got infected! Arrgh!
The difficulty locating the trail is something we might want to do something about. We can carry in a lot of green T-posts with bright red paint on the top to hammer in along the way if a bunch of Boy Scout volunteers can be aranged, maybe. There are a bunch of otherwise unused T-posts at Rincon the Trailbuilders might be able to um, er, well, "borrow." }:-}
About 4 miles from Smith Mountain Saddle you should have noticed a big metal box chained to a tree almost on the edge of sliding off in to the canyon below.
That box contained a few trail tools belonging to the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders and the box burned in the 2002 Curve Fire. Because the trail condition deteriorated the box had to be left up there until we can get horses up to help carry the box down.
We went up there to drag the box away from the edge of the cliff and we extracted the few melted, rusted, and destroyed tools which we carried down to Rincon. The box itself we moved toi a safer location where horses could come and turn around.
What do you think about T-posts being used to mark the trail in the places where it's difficult to locate?
DamOTclese - Jan 4, 2009 1:26 pm - Voted 10/10
Very nice trail report!You met Marvin's trail crew's tools. Marvin and his team were paid construction contractors who were asked to build those wood retainign walls along the last 4 miles of the trail past Smith Saddle. He and his people lived in the wide area across the way from the Rincon Fire Station while they did that paid trail work.
And oh man, hear you about the poison oak! Our volunteer trail crews were on Lower Bear Creek last Saturday, as I mentioned previously in another thread, and at least two of us got infected! Arrgh!
The difficulty locating the trail is something we might want to do something about. We can carry in a lot of green T-posts with bright red paint on the top to hammer in along the way if a bunch of Boy Scout volunteers can be aranged, maybe. There are a bunch of otherwise unused T-posts at Rincon the Trailbuilders might be able to um, er, well, "borrow." }:-}
About 4 miles from Smith Mountain Saddle you should have noticed a big metal box chained to a tree almost on the edge of sliding off in to the canyon below.
That box contained a few trail tools belonging to the San Gabriel Mountains Trailbuilders and the box burned in the 2002 Curve Fire. Because the trail condition deteriorated the box had to be left up there until we can get horses up to help carry the box down.
We went up there to drag the box away from the edge of the cliff and we extracted the few melted, rusted, and destroyed tools which we carried down to Rincon. The box itself we moved toi a safer location where horses could come and turn around.
What do you think about T-posts being used to mark the trail in the places where it's difficult to locate?