Buddy
Treehouser
I spent yesterday out in the mountains clearing some trail. It was suppose to be a 2 day trip but I returned home late last night. I left the pickup yesterday morning at 8am. It's a 2 hours drive from the house and while I would have liked to have gotten an earlier start I didn't feel like getting up real early. I had already hiked the first 4 miles of trail so I knew what kind of work it needed, not much. I grabbed an axe instead of a chainsaw for this section to avoid having to pack a saw 8 miles. At the end of the 4 miles is a cabin and at the cabin is a chainsaw, I would use it for the rest of the trail. It has been at least a year since I hiked the second section of trail and I didn't remember it being terribly bad but I do remember a lot of brush. On this day I was only worried about getting any downfall out of the trail and hopefully I would have enough time to rebuild a short section of trail once I reached my pulaski. I had stashed it along the trail this spring after having rebuilt a couple places that had washed out in the bottom 5 mile stretch.
So off I go, mostly small trees laying over the trail, one pine about 14" diameter and a grand fir that had broke off and stuck straight up and down in the trail. The creek in the bottom of the canyon is running too high to wade across but there is a log to walk on. I let Buddy (my dog) go first. It always makes me nervous when he crosses on the log because I saw him fall of it when the water was low one year. In high water he might drown. There isn't a lot of water but the creek bottom is so steep it runs super fast. My fears were realized within the first 8 feet of crossing, he fell off... Luckily he hadn't gotten out far enough to be swept away. He came back and being very careful he successfully tiptoed across. Did I mention he is 14 years old, we've been doing this for a long time but he is really slowing down.
About a half mile below the creek crossing we reach the cabin and I dig out a Stihl 024, just the right size for packing. From here down to my pulaski is about 2.5 miles. There are two other creek crossing and I don't know if there will be logs to cross on or not. At this point I also put on my snake chaps. I don't expect to find and rattlesnake at the elevation that I'm at but I will be dropping fast and the Hells Canyon area is full of snakes. This lower section of trail turned out easier than I thought, I only burned one tank of gas. The next creek crossing was a good one. There was a large spruce across the creek and we both made it, no problem. The lower creek crossing turned out to be worse than I remembered it being. The high water had changed the crossing and even the log that was across the creek didn't look safe. I called it quits right here, no sense in everyone spending a bunch of time trying to find my floating corpse in the Snake River. We watered up here and headed back up to the cabin.
Once I reached the cabin I laid down and took a nap. After my nap I had dinner and while resting and reading a book I decided to go ahead and walk out instead of staying the night. It was only 5:30 and if I'm feeling good I can make the hike out in about 1 hour and 45 minutes. There is a 2300 foot elevation difference between here and pickup and a 4000 foot elevation difference between the lower creek crossing that I turned back at and the pickup. I was pretty tired so I figured on a couple hour hike. It was nice hike out, the weather was beautiful and it was starting to cool off for the evening.
It was a good outing. The pictures I post should fill in the story gaps.
So off I go, mostly small trees laying over the trail, one pine about 14" diameter and a grand fir that had broke off and stuck straight up and down in the trail. The creek in the bottom of the canyon is running too high to wade across but there is a log to walk on. I let Buddy (my dog) go first. It always makes me nervous when he crosses on the log because I saw him fall of it when the water was low one year. In high water he might drown. There isn't a lot of water but the creek bottom is so steep it runs super fast. My fears were realized within the first 8 feet of crossing, he fell off... Luckily he hadn't gotten out far enough to be swept away. He came back and being very careful he successfully tiptoed across. Did I mention he is 14 years old, we've been doing this for a long time but he is really slowing down.
About a half mile below the creek crossing we reach the cabin and I dig out a Stihl 024, just the right size for packing. From here down to my pulaski is about 2.5 miles. There are two other creek crossing and I don't know if there will be logs to cross on or not. At this point I also put on my snake chaps. I don't expect to find and rattlesnake at the elevation that I'm at but I will be dropping fast and the Hells Canyon area is full of snakes. This lower section of trail turned out easier than I thought, I only burned one tank of gas. The next creek crossing was a good one. There was a large spruce across the creek and we both made it, no problem. The lower creek crossing turned out to be worse than I remembered it being. The high water had changed the crossing and even the log that was across the creek didn't look safe. I called it quits right here, no sense in everyone spending a bunch of time trying to find my floating corpse in the Snake River. We watered up here and headed back up to the cabin.
Once I reached the cabin I laid down and took a nap. After my nap I had dinner and while resting and reading a book I decided to go ahead and walk out instead of staying the night. It was only 5:30 and if I'm feeling good I can make the hike out in about 1 hour and 45 minutes. There is a 2300 foot elevation difference between here and pickup and a 4000 foot elevation difference between the lower creek crossing that I turned back at and the pickup. I was pretty tired so I figured on a couple hour hike. It was nice hike out, the weather was beautiful and it was starting to cool off for the evening.
It was a good outing. The pictures I post should fill in the story gaps.
