Work. Lots of it.

So we've had some pretty messed up weather over the last month. Heavy rain. High wind. -15 temeratures with over a foot of snow. Messed up to say the least. It has wreaked havoc on the trails.

Yesterday we took a crew of four up to Snakes to clear it and then go for a ride. We didn't expect the carange that we found. There were probably 20 trees down on the trail. Not just on here or there, but in groups everywhere. It was madness.

With all the trees down though, not one bridge on Snakes was damaged.

So, we(Dave, Dean, Tim and I)hiked up to Snakes. There were even trees down on the road, but we decided to take care of the trail first. We got to the top and saw first hand how bad it was going to be. We stashed the bikes and hiked down the trail. Starting at the bottom, we worked up. The first few trees we cleared went pretty quick. It was nothing too big. We cleared up to the LALR when I spied a new ladder across the forest. There is an old trail over there called SOS that has seen some new work lately. We went to check it out. The work is Ok, but a little ghetto. Not even close to our high standards, but whatever. Not our trail.

Back to the task at hand. We hiked up our trail a bit more to the Jump section. The carnage here was bad. The DJ gap was totally blocked off by about six trees that had fallen. The trail gap had two or three blocking it. Even the squid line had some down on it. With some work, we got it clear. Up around the corner, there was another group of five trees lying across the trail. Dean and Tim worked on clearing this, while Dave and I headed up the trail with our axes to work on some other stuff.

There is now a cool cedar tunnel on Snakes just before the trail up to the rock drop thanks to a croup of around five trees that fell there.

At around 10am I had to leave so I suited up and ripped the trail we just cleared. I forgot my helmet so I was wearing Dave's skid lid. That coupled with the fact that it was my first ride of the year on the hartail made for a cautious ride. Snakes flowed well after all the work we had done, but there are still a lot of trees that need to be cleared on the road out. Shotgun was cool. It still had a bit of snow and there were some trees that were cut and cleared there as well.

There's still a ton of work to be done, and with the forcast calling for winds in excess of 90kmh today, I imagine there will be even more by the weekend.

I found it VERY rewarding yesterday. Working to clear the trail for others to ride, and hanging out with buddies. Seriously. What could be better than that?

L8er Sk8ers.