A well-scorched trail
In the absence of serious rain and the law-abiding public, Forest Service BAER crews have remained hard at work on the Ventana Wilderness trails. Not fixing or maintaining them, mind you – they’re not allowed to use BAER money for that – but “preserving the government’s investment in the trail infrastructure” by taking steps to prevent further trail loss due to fire-related landsliding, flooding, etc. should heavy rain eventually arrive. To get their mules and equipment to the places where this preventative maintenance is needed, of course, they have to remove a lot of deadfalls, rebuild trail tread and, well, we think you get the idea …
Following standard Forest Service procedure, the details of this work are being kept top-secret (wouldn’t want Ventana trail information to fall into the hands or our nation’s enemies now, would we?), but rumor has it that the following trails are now in reasonably good shape:
Pine Ridge Trail from China Camp to Redwood Camp
Carmel River Trail from Los Padres Dam to Sulpher Springs (they are hoping to make it all the way to Hiding Camp)
Marble Peak Trail from Horsebridge to Strawberry Valley
Terrace Creek Trail from Coast Ridge to Pine Ridge Trail
Big Sur Trail from Cold Springs to Rainbow Camp
But nothing disappears faster than a trail that’s not in use, so let’s hope the Forest Service has the sense to open the Wilderness to the public before all this effort goes down the drain and their “investment in trail infrastructure” is well and truly lost …
Xasáuan Today 