I spent a week in late June doing trail work on a long neglected stretch of the Bigfoot Trail through the remote Yolla Bolly Mountains of Northern California. There were seven of us who worked to reclaim the trail from thorny ceanothus and tenacious manzanita, downed trees, and eroded tread. I was the weakest link in the crew; the hours were long, the work strenuous (at times), and the afternoons were hot. It was exhausting work. But, at the end of each day we felt proud about the visible difference we had been able to make.
I found myself thinking during that week in June about just how much I take the condition of the PCT for granted. Sure there are problems along the length of the trail but the general quality of the trail construction and maintenance is amazing. And that takes countless hours of professional and volunteer time. “Footprints” by Corey Lee Lewis in The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader: California and Bob Birky’s “The Art of the Trail: An Aesthetic Appreciation for What’s Underfoot” in the Oregon/Washington volume speak to the debt that we all owe those that planned, advocated for, financed, built and maintained the PCT so that we could hike it.
Several in our small team of volunteers had worked on a number of other volunteer crews including, Ken Taylor, a regular on the Pounder’s Promise team. [Pounder’s Promise was initiated in 2013 by Charles Williams to perform trail maintenance on the PCT as it passes thru the Northern Sierra (between Hwy 80 and Burney Falls). There have several posts on this website about Pounder’s Promise which can be found using the Search feature.] The photos included on this post are all from work being done in the Jackson Meadow and Packer Saddle area. In many cases they illustrate the ‘before’ and the ‘after’. The PCTA (www.pcta.org) hosts many volunteer opportunities focused on each segment of the trail.