Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Kings Canyon Report

Spent the last 10 days doing a trail maintenance project on the Deer Cove Trail out of Kings Canyon, just west of Cedar Grove, climbing the north wall of the canyon. This is in the Monarch Wilderness.

This trail had not been maintained for many years, and proved a challenge. In some places, it was difficult to even find the trail. The trail tread itself was in amazingly good condition, needing little work. Huge brushing job, enlarging from a basically enclosed space in places, to the standard of 8 feet wide/10 feet high. Also cut 30-some logs across the trail (crosscut).

The crew could not go beyond 8,000 feet, due to continuous snow cover...and this is on a south facing slope.

By the way, this is a great trail, with destination to Grizzly lakes, and a nice loop to Lewis creek and back to the Canyon floor, for a couple day trip.

Oh, saw the helicopter taking in the materials for one of the backcountry Ranger stations.

Ken: thanks for this report. I am scheduled to hit the High Sierra Trail July 11, the first stretch of which is on a similar slope, similar elevations. Report as of 6/13 has continuous snow at about 7800. On your trip, was there any indication or reliable report of the elevation/melt rate? Anything like 500 feet/week?

Also, the chopper you saw is consistent with reports that the rangers are going in this week.

I wanted to go to that project but I have been too busy with work!

Since the national park trail crews have permission to use power tools in the wilderness were you able to use any in this case? Sounds like you could have made good use of a brush saw.

Arggggg.....we were in USFS wilderness, so no power tools!

Last summer, we worked on the Kanawyer trail, on the South side, also no work in 15 years. We cut 570 trees (but we had a chain saw exemption) This year it was all hand work.

We are investigating something power for brush, for which we'd need an exemption.

Got to go brush saw all the way! I'm amazed the fire fighters still use chain saws to cut brush. These things don't fatigue you at all since your clipped into a harness.

We use the 550's with the PCTA.

Oooh, you hit my pet peeve there. Thank you for working to maintain wilderness trails, we need people like you that are dedicated to doing this good work. The no power tools limitation for maintenance is crazy. Trails need maintenance for many reasons. First, to keep people ON trails. Second, to maintain some access so people can enjoy these areas. Conservation and preservations starts with people appreciating these areas and if isn't trail access only a choice few will know how beautiful these areas are.

If the forest service and certain "so called: environmental groups keep advocating rules that limit access we are going to end up with a generation that doesn't value the beauty of the wilderness because they will have no way of seeing it.

I think most people that are all for no power tools doing trail work have never really done any trail work themselves.

Earlier this year while I worked in Southern California where you have allot of brush we had a full crew of about 20 people with 4 brush saws running all day every day and in 8 days we got 5 miles of trail cleared which was considered a major achievement. With hand tools we probably would have been lucky to get 2 miles.