I went outside! Not for fun, ofcourse, but to work. We hiked the Boulder River trail to the 3 mp without encountering any snow. Here we stopped and went to work. A log foot bridge built in '84 had been clobbered by a large (3' diameter) Douglas fir that fell on top of it breaking in two and knocking it down stream. The Douglas was purfectly postioned for it itself to become a foot log so with a crew of seven and three crosscuts we went to work flattening the log. We used our crosscuts to saw slices into the log and then knocked them out with a pulaski, sledge hammer or double-bit (the double bit worked best, but don't tell John Howell that since he carried the 12lb seldge in). In just one day we managed to flatten out some 40' leaving a 1½ foot wide tread. The crew returned on Sunday to finish the job placing rounds to step onto the bridge on either end. Hopefully this one will last longer than the last one did.

Back to Boulder River again, this time to do a little cross-cutting. On a previous walk of the trail I'd counted 58 trees across down, most of them beyond the 2.5 mile mark. Greg, Pam and I accompanied by Dawn-from-Darrington unleashed Mac-the-Knife and Number-One on cedar, hemlock and silver clearing out another 1/2 mile of obstreperous tree-trunks loitering in the trail. We stopped at a huge pile of 15-20 trees jack-strawed across about 50 feet of trail were we started limbing the mess to get ready for another cross-cutting trip next month. In the first stretch of the trail you'll find a large hole on the edge of the trail. This is an area were the trail is supported by large timbers underneath and some have broken leaving a large gap. Be carefull in this area - stay to the inside edge of the trail.