Blowdown
In early Spring, Sid hiked up to Crescent Lake on the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area outside of Seeley Lake. At the trailhead he met two women who had tossed in the towell and turned around due to all the trees across the trail. Like most of the western US, we have had a lot of drought years recently, accompanied by wildfires that killed a lot of trees. We had some pretty good windstorms this past winter and spring, "500 year events" according to the Forest Service, and they took down a lot of the dead trees from past forest fires. Unsurprisingly, some of those trees ended up falling across trails.
Sid made it up to Crescent Lake and to a couple of smalled lakes in the wilderness area beyond. But when he came back he remarked that if we wanted to do a good dead we could go up there and clear the trail. We both realized that since it wasn't in a wilderness area, we could bring our EGO battery-powered chainsaw which made it maybe doable in a single day. If it were inside the wilderness area where we would have had to use hand saws, it was a multi-day endeavor.
So in early August we set aside a day. I borrowed a couple of extra batteries for the saw from friends; I was pretty sure our one big battery and two smaller ones wouldn't last the whole day. In addition, Sid brought a hatchet and bow saw and I brought my pack axe and 24" pruning saw, and spare chain and a chain sharpening file.
I met Sid and we transferred my gear to his truck and then continued on to the trailhead. We hit the trail about 07:30. The day promised to be hot and smokey from fires in Washington and Oregon, and we hoped to get the worst of our work done before it got too hot.
As we started up the trail we found a few trees that had already been cut out, and thought maybe someone had already finished the job. It soon became apparent, however, that they had also turned around, although after doing some good work. Thank you, whoever you are!
We didn't have a good feel for how far we would get on one battery, and even though we had a total of five (~4 big ones), when we came to trees that could easily be stepped over we just let them be, planning on cutting them on our way back down if we had battery left.
It was pretty obvious when we came to the place where the folks who preceeded us quit, so we dropped out packs, got out the saw and went to work. It was nice that at least some of the trees were already dead, as that made them lighter and easier to cut. If they were big and heavy, we usually had to make two cuts, one on each side of the trail, and then roll the cutout log off the trail. But for the lighter ones we could save battery by cutting only one side and moving the whole top or butt section of the tree.
At one point there was a scramble of trees across the trail and it appeared one in particular was weighing all the others down. Sid said we should have taken a video, as when I cut that one out the rest went springing up like a big catapult. It saved us cutting a few extras out...
By the time we got up above the worst of the blowdown it was getting pretty hot and my legs were pretty tired. At one point when we stopped we noticed... the huckleberries were ripe! Yea! A great excuse to stop to rest and snack.
We made it to Crescent Lake, where we stopped to have lunch and recuperate. Sid made Copper get in the lake to cool off, and we both emptied our water bottles and refilled them using his filter.
After food and a brief rest, we left our packs and continued on up the trail into the wilderness area to see a couple of other lakes. On the way we went through some wonderful meadows of wildflowers. Unfortunately the beargrass had already come and gone, but other flowers were still blooming brightly.
We could have easily taken long naps on the rocks at the upper lakes, where we would have had a great view but for all the smoke. Instead, we headed back down to Crescent Lake where we rewatered, shouldered out packs, and headed back down, cutting out the trees we had "saved for later" on the way up.
On the way down we had a great view through a burned area giving a good idea of what you're in for if you don't keep a trail maintained every year. Unfortunately, with the DOGE massacre of our federal institutions, the Forest Service and Park Service among them, many of our trails will probably simply fall into disrepair due to lack of staffing for trail work.
We did not cut out two or three large trees that had fallen along the trail near switchbacks and which had a "new trail" already being forged by users to get around them.
Back in Seeley Lake, we stopped for ice cream. By the time I got home I was pretty well worn out.