In the Aftermath of the Station Fire, Angeles Forest Trails Need Your Help Healing

If you've ever taken a hike in the San Gabriel Mountains, chances are it's been on a trail, and if you're like most of us you've taken that simple pathway for granted. On your next hike, though, think about how it would be to go from your starting point to your destination and back without that trail.

Yes, trails are definitely important in easing our access to favored locations in the wilderness; but they also provide protection to our wilderness resources by channeling traffic into narrow corridors and thereby decreasing human impact on surrounding areas.

Trails are not self-sustaining features, however. They require constant maintenance, and for more than a century a Hidden Army equipped with an arsenal of McLeods, Pulaskis, rock grapplers, shovels, picks, rock bars, pruning tools, cross-cut and chain saws has kept our forest byways open for YOUR benefit. Now with so many trails damaged by last year's Station Fire, and other trails being heavily impacted due to diversion of recreationists to routes outside the fire recovery closure zone, the trails in our Angeles National Forest need our help more than ever.

This summer the Forest Committee's San Gabriels Trail Crew enlisted in the Hidden Army. In this short period we have conducted trail work parties on portions of the Pacific Crest Trail both inside and outside of the Station Fire recovery closure zone, on the Silver Moccasin Trail south from Chilao Flat Campground, and on the Valley Forge Trail leading down into the West Fork of the San Gabriel River from Red Box Station near Mount Wilson.

Besides providing a tremendous sense of self-satisfaction in contributing to the restoration and maintenance in our forest byways, our work parties also provide some additional perquisites worth considering. First, for now and for the next few years, they provide one of the only means of legally entering the fire recovery closure zone. Want to see how the West Fork fared from the fire? Because I participated on two work parties I can tell you that most of the canyon where the trail is located managed to escape the fire; the passage beneath the shady oaks and sycamore trees is just as beautiful as always. However, debris flows from fire-stripped slopes have all but obliterated portions of the trail in the very bottom of the canyon. (Working with the Forest Service, we hope to have this trail opened to the public by no later than late next spring after the rains have subsided.)

Another ‘perk' has been the opportunity to interact with other conservation groups, as well as becoming more involved with the Angeles National Forest administration. We have conducted joint work parties with the Pacific Crest Trail Association, the Student Conservation Association, and an environmental charter high school, all overseen by Angeles National Forest personnel. Just last month this alliance worked a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail in the high back range of the San Gabriels, where we had the rare opportunity to drive into Little Jimmy Trail Camp either for the day or to camp for one or more nights with the other trail crews.

So if you want to help out and have some fun in the process, please check the listings in the chapter's Activities Schedule for the second and fourth Saturdays of each month.; or check the Angeles Forest Restoration Project website. To receive reminders of upcoming events, send an email.