Static Point Update - Trail Work

I wrote this up Saturday night:

While fires rage on the east side of the Cascades (and our neighbors to the south), the smoke has been pouring over into the Puget Sound, affecting the air all the way out past the Olympic Mountains. Seattle, my home, is experiencing the worst air quality in recorded history - in fact, the worst air quality in the world today! And I’ve been to Chengdu and Beijing, so the comparison is unbelievable. The Space Needle tower isn’t visible from my neighborhood! The authorities really, really, wanted everyone to stay inside. So going outside to go climbing seemed a little bit too much, but I didn’t want to stay home. Idea: head back out to Static Point and do some trail clearing!

Static Peak

From the bridge crossing the South Fork, there’s normally a great view of Static Peak, the summit above Static Point. Not today - this photo was taken around 1.00pm.

Smokey Hills

These hills above Olney Pass were still filled with smoke when I left at 5.00pm. Its reported that the air will start improving in a day or two.

In the spring, I purchased the smallest battery-powered Stihl chainsaw available for just this purpose - the 18+ downed trees criss-crossing the 1.5 mile of closed road we have to hike up now. Last month, I spent an afternoon on the “uphill” section of trail. This time, I began at the trailhead and worked my way in. I was pleased to see that both of my batteries gave me about an hour of work each.

And I’m stoked to say now that the worst of the downed trees are cleared. I wasn’t quite able to reach where I had ended before, so one more trip is needed to really finish this piece. But I’m sure it’s a lot better than before, and hopefully the hike time will get down to 1.00-1.15 again.

2nd Gully

There were four gullies with downed trees, making for difficult crossings. I had cleared the 4th gully last month. Happy to say that I was able to clear all three remaining gullies today.

3rd Gully

The 3rd Gully had the worst of it. There were 6 logs crossing the trail here, requiring a duck/crawl under the first two, then climb up onto the third and scramble over the 4th and 5th logs. The 6th tree was just 10’ further.

It's not over yet.

There are still three trees, in the 1st and 3rd gully (shown here) that need to be addressed. They are large (24-30” diameter), and only resting on two points, the root ball and the trunk about 25’ away. I need to find a better option to cut these trees - that’s some massive tension and I wasn’t ok with doing an under-cut on such a big log four feet in the air, standing on a slope.

Photo note: I reference 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Gullies. This is just a reference to the four gullies with trees to be cleared - not the first four gullies crossed on the trail.

For today I drove 125 miles for 3 hours, and did just under 3 hours of work - I let the batteries dictate how long I stayed out today, and packed up when they ran out.

Special thanks for all the encouragement I’ve been getting lately. Scroll down to see the topo’s and beta for the Online sector at Static Point, or enter Static Point in the search box. If you’d like to help defray the cost of fuel, equipment, hardware and time I’ve spent on this, i’ve added a Tip button on the right side of the blog. Even a cup of coffee is nice!