Today’s trip had one objective – to continue the work we did earlier this year on the Cottonwood Meadows trail. In June, we brushed and cut logs off the trail to just before the lake. We ran out of time, energy and batteries, but the trail to that point was pretty good when we were done. Today, we wanted to continue that work and hopefully lop and flag a route thru the cut area down to the lower segment of the trail. We were mostly successful.

I didn’t take many pictures unfortunately. I was too busy working I think. I met Oliver in Ripplebrook about 8:30. We decided to do a shuttle hike like we did last time, so it took a bit to get the vehicles staged. When we got to the south end, we were met with logging equipment – they are doing thinning work just shy of the southern trailhead. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to be hauling out logs, they just seemed to be making slash piles. The cutting seemed to be mostly done. The good news is that they improved the 4635-120 spur quite a bit. All brushed out now. We parked Oliver’s vehicle at the bottom end of the trail and then headed up to the top in my truck. It is a pretty long shuttle to do this – we got up to the top a little after 10:00. It was a bit chilly up there. I think my truck said 45 degrees or something. We suited up and headed down the trail. We didn’t do much on the upper portions, but we did throw a few limbs off here and there and since I brought my “mini pulaski”, I grubbed out a few rotten logs.

It wasn’t long before we got to the first meadow – I hung some new flags at both ends to help guide people thru the meadows. We went across the meadow (didn’t have to go around since it was all dry this time of year). We soon came to the next open area which is pretty much covered in brush – the tread is kind of visible for a bit but then kind of disappears. I hung more flags – we punted on doing anything in here today, as I wanted to fix the area around the lake and get the route farther south done. This will be a great area for my brush cutter. We made it thru that area, and started down the hill to the lake. This is where we did quite a bit of work last time but left one larger log. We left it again today as it is a relatively easy duck under and will take a while to cut out.

We made it down to the lake and followed the trail to where we got confused last time – we headed into the woods too early! We found the tread – it was kind of buried under a bunch of brush, so we spent a while cutting it all out and hanging some new flags. It is very clear where the trail goes now. Once it heads back into the woods it wasn’t too bad other than the downed logs. We got to the 5830-240 spur road and stopped for lunch.

After lunch, we started creating a new route thru the cut south of the 240 spur. In the past we had headed more into the cut but we decided to try and stay in the uncut trees as much as we could. Last time we were down here we found a whole bunch of groves of old cedar trees and the goal was to route the trail by those groves. This was the beginning of the new route off 5830-240:

We worked our way down, creating a path that made sense to us. As we were working down the trail, at one point I looked at a tree and was surprised to see a blaze!

It was blazed on both sides so I’m very sure this was along the old route. We thought we might have found a bit of tread but the route quickly entered another cut area. We routed thru this cut area, kind of choosing the path of least resistance until we got back to uncut forest. From there, we continued our route and soon found the cedar groves. We found more than we did the last time. The route in here got rather rough, mainly due to a lot of downed logs, but it will be a nice route once it gets refined I think.

Once past the cedar groves, we were running out of time so we kind of quit working on a path and just worked our way out to the old spur road. We are both thinking we could probably find a better route south from the cedar groves, but that would have to wait for another day. We made our way out to the 270 spur and walked it out to the 265/265 spur and walked that down to the continuation of the trail at the end of the 265 spur. The lower section could use some work as well but wasn’t terrible. There are a number of logs across the trail in this segment.

We made it back to Oliver’s car just before 4:30, but we still had to make the long drive back up to the top. I think it took almost an hour to get back to the top. By the time we got there it was starting to get dark. Oliver had to get back so he took off while I packed up.

It was a great day of work on this trail – it needs a lot more work, but it is greatly improved from what it was a couple of months ago. The addition of a route thru the center section to connect the two pieces will make this a MUCH better trail. It will take quite a bit of work, but I’m hoping we can make it happen! This is a trail that deserves to be saved!