Super Bowl XLIX: SMC Volunteers Win!!!

3 February 2015 | Selma, OR — You want to know who really won Super Bowl XLIX? It wasn’t the Sea Hawks or the Patriots. It was our awesome volunteers.

On Super Bowl Sunday, seven of us met up starting at 5:30am and headed out to the Babyfoot Lake Trailhead. While most of the country was enjoying guacamole, hot wings and cold beer, our volunteers were busy clearing about 100 logs and clipping contiguous brush for about 4.5-miles.

One group worked with a chainsaw to clear downed trees to the wilderness boundary, and another skipped ahead with their crosscuts. We use old-fashioned crosscut saws because chainsaws are not aloud in federal wilderness areas. We hiked around 9-miles total over rugged, steep country.

This long trail section of the Trans-Kalmiopsis Route has been giving us grief since we started work in 2010. Each year it fills in with downed trees killed by the 2002 Biscuit Fire, making it difficult to pass. Brush thriving in a shade-less environment grows with vigor, and the thick manzanita, tanoak, ceanothus and other shrubs need constant attention.

But we keep on it year by year, because we’re winners, and the rate of windfall is finally diminishing. Without the help from volunteers this trail section would have been lost under contiguous slash piles. Siskiyou Mountain Club volunteers win.

The route from Babyfoot Lake to Carter Creek is mostly free of downed logs and passable to hikers. A skeleton forest still stands on these high ridges, and we need your help to keep these sections open. Sign up for a volunteer outing today.