#trail construction

By Rees Hughes

Perched on the very top of Sierra Buttes, nearly 8,600 feet high and well above any surrounding topography, the decommissioned fire lookout offers an amazing 360-degree view.  On a clear day, the view extends west across the Sacramento Valley to the Yolla Bollys and Sutter Buttes, south across the Yuba drainage and far into the High Sierra, and north and east are equally stunning.  It is a couple mile side trip from the PCT and well worth the detour.  I’ve gone a couple of times now including a visit in early August.

In 1975 the National Geographic Society published a comprehensive 196-page book on the nascent Pacific Crest Trail.  The book chronicled the thru-hike of author Will Gray and photographer Sam Abell.  This was well before trail names, trail angels, and even completion of the trail.  A friend of mine recently gave me a copy he had purchased at a library sale.  It truly captures the era when external frame Kelty packs, wool, and heavy leather boots reigned supreme. It is well worth a read.

This short excerpt begins at Sierra Buttes, just north of Sierra City. I have included a few photos of the lookout from my walk through the area:

“Lightning makes an incredible whipping and crackling sound just before it hits.  Then there’s a loud buzzing like radio static as the thunderclap shakes the whole building.  Sometimes there’s a blue glow around the roof overhang, and I’ve even seen electricity arc back and forth between the beams.  The first time I saw that, man, I was scared!”

Bill Thomason sat with his feet on a desk inside the fire lookout station that perches – at 8,587 feet – atop the highest of the Sierra Buttes.  The thumb-like spires of volcanic rock provide a vantage high above the rolling ridges of the northern Sierra, and I could trace, far below, the Pacific Crest Trail near Sardine Lakes. A side trail ended at the base of the 178 metal steps that climbed the rocks to our steel-and-glass cage.

Bill, a college student who works summers as a fire guard for the U.S. Forest Service, continued to describe the awesome display of a thunderstorm and I was glad that the sky was bright blue and cloudless. “One of the first things I learned,” Bill said, “was not to touch metal during electrical storms. But I’ve gotten so used to them now that I can usually sleep right through.”

What were his duties? “Basically, I just look for smoke, I take a compass reading and check my card file to see if it’s coming from a sawmill, say, or a campground. If not, I radio headquarters to have it checked out. Fortunately, this area’s not too vulnerable; there are relatively few fires each year.”

I asked Bill whether the isolation of sitting alone high on a remote mountain ever bothered him. “Usually it’s not all that lonely,” he answered. “Besides the hiking path, there’s a jeep trail, so I get a few visitors almost every day. Sometimes more than a few – over the Fourth of July weekend, at least 150 people trooped through. And there’s always communication through the radio. But I have gone as long as four days without seeing anyone.  I guess I’ve learned to appreciate both company and loneliness. The time of day I most like to be alone is at sunset.  It’s so peaceful up here then.”

Fire lookouts are fast going the way of the typewriter, Kodachrome and the handwritten letter. According to author Philip Connors, 90 percent of American lookout towers have been decommissioned with only a few hundred remaining, mostly in the West and Alaska.

A dozen miles north of Sierra Buttes, the trail skirts placid Gold Lake, named in acknowledgment of one of the biggest hoaxes of the gold rush days. In 1849 vague rumors of a lake with banks strewn with gold spread through the mining camps.  In the early summer of 1850, an English miner named J.R. Stoddard appeared in Nevada City with a poke of nuggets and a dramatic tale.  While on a hunting trip, he said, he had stumbled on the fabled lake of gold, and was astounded by its abundance of riches. As he scooped up handfuls of nuggets, he was suddenly attacked by Indians, and was wounded in the leg by an arrow while escaping.

He offered – for a price – to lead an expedition back to the lake; dozens of gold-hungry prospectors responded and paid the fee. When the party left Nevada City, a throng of perhaps a thousand other men followed along.

For days the horde vainly tramped the mountains. Stoddard became increasingly vague about his bearings, until at last the miners rebelled and gave him an ultimatum: He had 24 hours to find the lake or he would be strung from the nearest tree.

That night the wily Stoddard stole out of camp and disappeared. In the morning the miners, thoroughly chagrined, headed back to their old claims or sought new ones in the Gold Lake country.

Sam rejoined me on the trail north of Gold Lake and together we walked the dry, hot ridges of the northern Sierra.  Late one afternoon, as we followed a dusty road toward a bluff overlooking the North Fork of the Feather River, the aroma of cooking drew us toward a small prefabricated house alive with young men.

It was a crew of the California Ecology Corps, sponsored by the California Division of Forestry. Under contract with the U.S. Forest Service, the men were building a six-mile section of Pacific Crest Trail from the ridgetop down into the Feather River Canyon near the town of Belden. After we had demolished a supper of roast beef and corn on the cob, I sat sipping coffee and talking to Dick Hansen, project foreman and a 20-year veteran of the Division of Forestry, and Rick Lawrence, the 22-year-old crew leader.

“We’ve been up here for just under three weeks, and we’ve already got more than half a mile of trail built,” Dick said with pride. “The whole project should take no more than four or five months, we hope.”

“We’re averaging about 250 feet of finished trail per day,” Rick added, “and that’s through manzanita, which is hard to dig out. We have to follow strict specifications of trail width and drainage, of course, and we’re anxious to do a good job; we’re hoping that this one will lead to more contracts.”

In the late mountain twilight the corpsmen returned from swimming, fishing, or rock climbing and crawled into the sleeping bags scattered around the prefab building. A few minutes after five o'clock the next morning I was served a tasty cheese and mushroom omelet by camp cook Jim Atha. Breakfast over, we crowded into a truck and bumped along the dirt road leading to the new trail site.

Following the newly constructed section, I rounded a well-engineered switchback and faced a tangle of brush. Ahead of me a proficient team of two strong corpsmen worked with lopping shears to cut out the tough branches and trunks and form a rough corridor. A couple of dozen yards behind them, another team wielding picks and shovels grubbed out rocks and roots and widened the initial path. Other teams graded, cleared, and trimmed, until finally a permanent section of Pacific Crest Trail had been completed.

“We rotate the men every day so they don’t get burned out on any one  job,” Rick told me. “As we work, we’re careful to preserve the natural lay of the land as much as possible. We only take out boulders or trees where they would be a serious hindrance to hikers.”

From the top of the canyon wall, Rick looked down at his crew and said, “This is the kind of work you can appreciate doing. You feel like you’re leaving your mark, that you can come back in 20 years and be proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

Over 1,000 trail projects are waiting for funding to help put Americans back to work

Trails have been an established economic driver for some time, with the outdoor recreation industry contributing over $800 billion per year to the economy. Now there are more than 1,000 trail projects in the United States waiting on funding to help put Americans to work building, maintaining, and improving our nation’s trails, and this number reflects only a fraction of the estimated need that…

The Psychology and Science Behind How Hiking Trails Are Created

You can find a hiking trail or walking path almost anywhere in the United States, whether you’re deep in the backcountry or a few yards from a parking lot. Most casual hikers probably give them little thought before lacing up their boots, but hiking trails don’t just appear naturally.

Sure, the popular pathways are created with shovels and sweat and grit, but that’s not all: Modern trail…

By R. Max Peterson, Chief Emeritus, U.S. Forest Service

Although not planned or envisioned part of his career with the Forest Service, Max Peterson played an invaluable role with the big three National Scenic Trails – the AT, CDT, and the PCT.  Max initially worked on the California Riding and Hiking Trail which was a predecessor to the PCT.  In the course of his long Forest Service career he also ended up helping complete the Appalachian Trail and after becoming Chief signed the plan for the Continental Divide Trail.  In his retirement Max has continued to be involved with efforts to complete the CDT.

Max has drawn upon his official Forest Service diaries for some of the information included in his account. As Max explained, “In those days ever employee was required to keep a daily diary which was reviewed and signed by his or her supervisor.  These diaries were also frequently analyzed for different purposes and were even used at times in legal proceedings.  As an example District Ranger diaries were sometimes analyzed to see if they were spending the expected amount of time in the field (80%) and to see if they were doing the kind of field inspections required.”

The “Art of the Trail: An Aesthetic Appreciation of What’s Underfoot” by Robert Birkby in the Oregon/Washington volume of The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader pays homage to the contributions of people like Max Peterson.

  I have many memories of the Pacific Crest Trail beginning in August 1949 when I went to work for the Forest Service on the Plumas National Forest in Quincy, California.

During my first week on the job I was asked by George Newhall, Forest Engineer for the Plumas National Forest, to go with him to lay out a portion of a riding and hiking trail that would descend to the Middle Fork of the Feather River and cross at Hartman Bar.   The trail was a part of the California Riding and Hiking Trail, which would later become part of the Pacific Crest Trail.

Being from Missouri and not used to such steep country it was quite a challenge to help George Newhall lay out the trail.  To follow the high country across the Plumas Forest either required going way east to Beckwourth Pass or cutting across through the Buck's Lake area and across the Middle Fork of the Feather River.  There was already a very steep and rather treacherous trail going to Hartman Bar on the Middle Fork. In fact there was an old bridge and a small cabin there that I think was built by miners.  Ultimately, it was that shorter and more scenic route that was selected despite the more daunting construction.

Truthfully there were not too many good trail locaters but one of them was George Newhall who taught me.  A trail must be on ground that will hold up under foot and or horse traffic depending on the use.  Swampy areas or meadows had to be circumvented. The trail had to be built to handle rain and snow through proper drainage.  And, to be economically built steep sidehills, heavy boulders or solid rock were also avoided.

George was a very patient and thorough trainer as he gave me numerous pointers, including how to measure the distance from where the pack would be on the horse to such things as hillside rocks and trees.  There were other places that there was so much rock that even after blasting we had to import material to provide some footing for people and horses.

My work diary for August 10, 1949 (my 3rd day on the job) indicates that I "inspected the trail to Hartman bar and returned".  That would require about a 20 mile hike altogether and descending and ascending about 4,000 feet! Then a week later (August 17) my diary shows "To Hartman Bar to run flag line and return".  On both August 10 and August 17 the diary shows 8 plus 2 more hours.  It was common in those days to work long hours to complete work rather than going back a second day and no one expected to get paid for those extra hours.

Trail crews typically stayed in tent camps as near as feasible to the trail work and usually a cook was employed for larger crews (10 or more). Some crews worked 10 days on and 4 days off so they could go home on days off.  Local crews of experienced miners or other experienced construction people were hired when available but many did not want to go to a remote area like the Middle Fork and so such hard manual labor.

Building the trail that we laid out was quite a challenge because the trail had to be built across terrain of solid rock or huge boulders without the use of powered equipment.  One resource we used was plastic explosives.  These had been developed during World War II.  We were fortunate to have a trail foreman who knew how to use plastic explosives.  

The trail was laid out using a small hand held instrument called an Abney (or Abny) level.  It is calibrated in both degrees and percent so you can look through the instrument to maintain the desired grade.  Of course you have to aim at something that is the same height as your eye such as another person or a rod in order to be accurate.  The route was marked usually by red or orange flagging tied on bushes or tree limbs.  The abney was used again during construction to ensure the accuracy of the grade. Usually the only time a transit was used was for determining the land boundaries or for setting the level of a bridge or other structure.

Interestingly enough I later served on the Cleveland and San Bernardino National Forests as Forest Engineer and we built portions of the State Riding and Hiking Trail on both of those Forests.  Unfortunately portions of that trail were on private land so right of ways were a problem and at times we had to spend a lot of time with landowners to get permission to cross their property.

Working with private landowners is an art not a science.  Most private landowners are concerned about not only giving up some of their land to the Government but also about what happens when a lot of people are crossing their land.  Also many private land owners fence their land and they are reluctant to have gates in the fences which if left open can cause livestock to get out.  In spite of all this, I found that most land owners will work with you if you show a genuine interest to try to meet their concerns about where to locate the trail, private land signing, etc.  They also recognize that the Forest Service can exercise condemnation authority if they are completely unreasonable.  I cannot remember a single case where we had to exercise that authority except in a few estate cases where the owners were unable to grant a right of way.

By 1966 my job had changed significantly as had the trail.  Much progress had been made on what was then known as the Pacific Crest Trail although sections had not yet been completed.  A new factor – wilderness -- had entered the equation, and the trail became somewhat controversial in some locations. Fortunately those concerns were not strong and did not really hinder the work on the trail.