YOSEMITE 1 BACKCOUNTRY TRAIL CREW
JUNE 2008 MONTHLY OVERVIEW
Russell Greer, BACKCOUNTRY TRAILS SUPERVISOR

Early in June the Yosemite-I Crew left their vehicles at the trail head, and hiked 9 miles along an abandoned railroad grade to a remote meadow in the south end of Yosemite called Deer Camp. The camp move went smoothly, and in a few days we all felt like we had been living in the wilderness our whole lives.  Our new camp is surrounded by ancient red fir trees, and plenty of wildflowers.  Much thanks to our sponsors Doug Matheson, Chris Lerman, and Ralph Raya for scouting out our new home.  Once we settled into our new camp the crew was pumped up and ready to hit the trail doing maintenance on the Bridalveil Campground Trail. Just when we thought we were done with this trail we ran into a large rutted section that required the installation of numerous wooden checks to bring the trail back up to grade.
Upon completion of the Bridalveil Trail, life around camp took a sudden change. We lost five of our crew members in a matter of a week due to personal reasons and some minor injuries requiring reassignment to light duty at CCC Centers. The remaining six members of our crew held strong on the trail despite feeling the absence of the rest of the crew. We started and finished our first reconstruction project. This entailed removing a large culvert from the trail.  To prevent the trail from washing out, we built a large outside retaining wall and ford to redirect the water off the trail. During this project everyone got their hands on some new tools including a Lewis winch, a stone boat, a grip hoists, a chop saw, and all the rigging that goes along with these hefty tools. After completing this  project we went back to the cutting back the overgrown vegetation and repairing erosion problems on all the trails that we can reach from Deer Camp.
Curriculum: 
We had a variety of classes this month ranging from Zack Thornton’s martial arts class to writing and  knot tying.

Personnel Changes:
Zack Thornton has left the crew for personal reasons.  Good luck Zack!
Doug Winberg also had to leave the crew due to a stress fracture in his foot.  Thanks for all your hard work Doug. We won’t forget you.
Odds and Ends:
Thank you to Shauna Olmsted for visiting our crew.