Volunteer Trail Crew Day
The other night, I watched in awe as a rare-for-Los Angeles lightning and thunderstorm crashed away outside. I tucked into bed in anticipation of an early morning wakeup call – I had been looking forward to an opportunity to give back to the trail I called home for months, and my schedule finally allowed us to dedicate a whole Saturday to the cause.
The next morning at 6am, we were out the door, decked out in our hiking rain gear. It was still pouring. We started the long drive out to Cajon Pass, the location of our favorite McDonald’s stop on trail. After driving through the rain, we pulled up in a cloud of fog to a small gathering of trucks and a PCT-emblemed shed. We introduced ourselves, signed in, and received our standard-issue hard hats and gloves. We were joined by a few other volunteers – two girls, a veteran trail worker, and a family from Arizona. It was pretty much everyone’s first time doing trail work. We listened to a small tutorial and then piled into trucks to take us to the trailhead.
Me and Radio were to be responsible for cutting and throwing overgrown debris from the trail, while the rest of the crew worked behind us to shape and rake the trail, building out sharper corners where erosion had made its mark and smoothing out any ditches that have appeared. More advanced trail work can include re-building drainage ditches or stairs, but since we were a crew of beginners, I think we stuck to the “easy” work.
I think I look a little too happy wielding these clippers…
It was not easy. Constantly bending down to pick up bundles of brush, full tree branches, and then launching them significantly high enough to clear about 10’ from the trail was hard work. The man running the chain saw up front was quick, and we had to hurry to keep up behind him, tossing branches and leaves out of the way, and clipping back any strays he missed.
However – it was really fun. We got to know a lot of interesting people including the men who maintain the trail officially. The PCTA recently rolled out an “adoption” method of maintaining the trail, and these men (Bill, Jim, Tim and John) were all very involved in maintaining their sections – out here working several times a month. It was great swapping stories about the trail and their experiences hiking and maintaining it.
We settled into a quick lunch break and continued on for a few more hours, before calling it a day at 2:30 and beginning our hike back out. Thankfully, the weather was pretty cooperative and it stayed a cool and damp temperature throughout the day – I could only imagine how difficult the work would be in the hot sun.
Overall, it was a really inspiring and rewarding day. It was really neat to see the work put in by these volunteers to maintain a trail so special to us – truly a labor of love. What really caught the attention of Radio and I was that there weren’t many more-than-one-time volunteers, and that the number of former thru-hiker volunteers was really low, most thru-hikers opting for the more “fun” work of trail angel-ing. Hopefully me and Radio can help spread the word about the value and rewards of volunteer trail crew work and inspire more thru-hikers to give back their time to the trail. We’re definitely glad we did and look forward to making this a tradition in our busy schedules.
