Gilmore Trail Brushing

A few weeks back we rode the Gilmore Trail down to the Chena Flood Projects and back and had to do a lot of ducking through some major brush along the way. So Larry put together a trail brushing crew and we brushed back a fair amount of the trail yesterday.

Seven sleds showed up with nine workers, Larry borrowed some brushing hand tools and I brought along the Kat Kitchen. We rode the trail about 7 miles to an old abandoned mining cabin and set up our base camp in the nice flat area in front. After the kitchen was leveled and ready for use we broke up into two groups, one group went back up the hill and I went with John down the trail towards all the overflow. Oh joy.

The morning went pretty good and we got a nice bit of brushing done, of course there was also a lot of overflow and I mean a lot. About 2 miles down the trail we get to this one spot where the overflow is wide and looks pretty solid, yeah right. So me being silly Ol’ me decided I could cut a trail around the overflow. Thinking I could do it was my first mistake, my second mistake was stopping in the middle of it.

So I drove up the sloping ice of overflow, got to the other side and turned around and scoped out a new route, all was going just fine until about the middle of the over flow pack when I decided to stop and look at the direction I wanted to go. We’ll sh–, next thing I knew I’m sinking and sunk I did into three of water with a hard pack ice ledge in front that had my skis point to the moon and the back end of my sled under water.

The other John was there and he figured he could pull me out with his sled, nope, not happening. So out comes the rope and come-a-long. Sure glad I pack that rope and come-a-long along, it made short work of yard’n out that 1000 lb beast I drive. Of course in the process I stepped off my running board thinking (another mistake) that I’d step on the solid ice, nope again, this time I sunk up to my knees in water. So I got to spend the rest of the day working in wet boots and socks. Thankfully I have wool boot liners and smart wool socks, my feet were wet but not cold. Now I wonder how that fish got in my boot.

After getting the Bear Beast AKA BearCat un-stuck we headed back to our base camp and had a nice hot lunch of brats and hamburgers, did I say thanks Larry. After eating we all went back on the trail and worked on brushing some more until about 4:00 when we called it quits for the day.

Thanks to all who helped and a good day of trail work, now that I’m home and have dry feet again.