After 2 days of travel, it was time to get working. Job one, we needed to cross Waterfall Creek a couple of times, no easy task this time of year!
Time to Lop!
We spent most of the day leap frogging each other with the loppers.
We gradually climbed the mountain above camp.
Typical of trails in this area we crossed a rock field. The rocks here are constantly moving and filling the trail.
Once again the character of the forest changes. We are far above the ponderosa forests below.
Most of the old trees that were burned in the 2000 fire have fallen and were cut out in years gone by. As the forest recovers, the brush is the first vegetation to re-establish.
On day three, we divided the team and sent Scott and Carl up the trail to the end of our project area. This gave us the reconnaissance we needed to plan allocation of resources in the days ahead. Thank you Scott for the photos from your day!
Tim seeks out some shade for his lunch break. The weather had turned warmer and even though we were nearing 7000 feet of elevation, the direct sun was pretty warm.
For the afternoon, guess what? More lopping! Not shown in any of these pictures are the ticks…… we found a few! It was lop for 15 minutes, leap frog up the trail to the next section, pick off ticks for a couple of minutes then rinse and repeat!
After a good long day we had only about 1/2 mile of trail to complete. We were all sick of lopping for the day so decided to send a small crew up tomorrow to finish this section of trail. On the way down, I snapped this image looking at our work….. Looks pretty good though huh? This really is an amazing trail with gentle grades, great rock work, incredible views, and a well established trail corridor.
davefaitlemonde.com 
Thanks for your work! Beautiful area… A big shuttle hike from the Crags to Stoddard is on my bucket list, and between this project and the Stoddard Bridge replacement this year, maybe it can happen in the next few years.
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