Tucannon River - Rattlesnake Loop — Wednesday, Apr. 19, 2017

Eastern Washington > Palouse and Blue Mountains

A five-day (!) Washington Trails Association logout and trail clearing team in the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness in the lovely Blue Mountains, in the southeast corner of Washington close to the borders of Oregon and Idaho. A six-hour drive from Seattle, but well worth it. The awesome Rob summed it up beautifully, so I just plagerized his report verbatim: Had a spectacular BCRT with Randy and the sawyer leads, Jim, Dave, Tom, Bob, Paul things to love 1: The ranger station is very cush especially with the temps in the 30s in the morning 2: The leaders were awesome, everyone (leaders included), learned from the shared skills and openness to input from anyone 3: The volunteers were fun, hard working, enjoyable and generous… lots of shared coffee, crackers, peeps, donuts and stories 4: The trail work was challenging and super appreciated by local forest service staff 5: Plenty of tired muscles and no injuries 6: It only rained at night 7: There was much more logging then brushing, but we still did plenty of brushing 8: I had no idea how important Geometry and Physics are to logging 9: I learned a new meaning to the word swamp 10: The waitlist worked, picking up two excellent fill in’s the week before to keep the crew full. 11: Last but not least Randy was an exceptional group leader, he sweated the details scouting all the trails we worked on, “adzing” a log to make the river crossing on to Rattlesnake Ridge trail easy and dry (normally a ford is required). Randy keep safety on the top of everyone’s minds. a total gem! what not to love? 1: Ticks Here is a sample of the work, first of 22 logs taken out yesterday morning before we returned to Seattle and Spokane, by a 5 person team lead by Dave and Tom. We hit the trail at 6:30am on Sunday to have time to climb up two miles and 1600’ vertical to the end of Saturdays work and get a second day of work completed before having to quit and head for home at midday.