Now You See It ... Now You Don’t

The refuge has two trails leading down to the spit.  The main trail is a beautiful, wide, 1/2 mile trail that meanders through giant Western Red Cedar and Douglas Firs. 

The other trail is a primitive trail that is 6/10 of a mile and winds through lush green forest.  Some places in this trail are single file walking only.  This trail tends to get very wet and muddy when it rains.

One of our jobs was to re-gravel and re-mulch the primitive trail.  Our first task was to spread gravel along the muddiest, torn-up places in the trail.  It would have been nice to gravel the entire trail but we didn’t have enough gravel to do that.

Teri loading gravel.

We have two narrow trailers that pull behind the ATV’s.  Mark and I spread about 4000 pounds of gravel in about 3 days. 

Mark scooping out gravel.

The newly graveled areas look great.

Light gray area is fresh gravel.

After the gravel, it was time to put the call out for some other volunteers to help spread mulch.

As far as we can tell, out of about 180 volunteers, there is only one other volunteer besides us that is federally certified to drive an ATV.  

Teri on ATV (doesn't it look like a tropical jungle?).

Our plan was to have Mark and me drive the ATV’s, have someone at the mulch pile, whom we would help load the trailers, and have at least two people on the trail spreading the mulch.  This plan worked perfect for 2 out of the 3 days it took to spread 50 cubic yards (35,000 pounds!) of mulch.  I won’t go into the one day everything fell apart.  As you know, it’s all about the help you get.

The whole circuit from loading the trailer at the mulch pile, driving to the trail, unloading (not spreading) and driving the full circle back to the mulch pile took about 17 minutes.  We figured it took approximate 10 hours with 2 ATV’s to finish the pile.

We were able to mulch half of the trail and are now awaiting another load of mulch.

Mark at the end of the mulch.

Now you see it:

Now you don’t:

Teri