Our crews make change

You can see from space

In 2002 the Biscuit Fire roared through southwest Oregon’s 180,000-acre Kalmiopsis wilderness area. The wildfire was one of Oregon’s largest in history, and burned intensely, leaving swaths of skeleton forests in its wake. In ensuing years dead trees started falling into contiguous stacks, rendering entire trail systems impassable:

Enter Siskiyou Mountain Club. In 2010 we put our first volunteers on the ground, in a quest to save the 26-mile Trans-Kalmiopsis Route.

On November 16, 2011 a satellite snapped a picture of the route at Bailey Mountain Trail #1109 just north of Blake’s Bar:

The trail was barely visible under downed trees and thick brush that had grown into the corridor. Then in 2012 SMC volunteers hiked 12-miles into the trail section and restored it, using crosscut saws, loppers, pulaskis and axes.

Then on June 7, 2013, another satellite image was captured, revealing the outline of a trail we saved:

Our volunteers work is human powered. They use old-fashioned crosscut saws, long-armed loppers, handsaws, axes, pulaskis, shovels, grub-hoes, and other hand-tools to make change you can see from space. Without our work, the trails we work would be lost forever.