Written by Ryan Kunish, Wild Stew Field Crew Member.
Step one of this hitch began four weeks ago when we initially came out to the Four Springs Trail in the Mount Wrightson Wilderness with a focus on brushing, logout and treading. While we wrapped up a sizeable portion of the available brushing and treading that hitch, we felt the need to build numerous steps, staircases, and walls along this trail in order to control erosion and ease often steep and slippery grades, so this hitch we got the go ahead to come back and focus on those tasks.
We began the hitch with a small but capable crew and set to work building steps. The first step was to flag and prioritize potential work and the next step was to begin constructing a 14 step staircase about 2 miles from camp that we had desperately wanted to build in last time. Our rock quarry was sparse but there was enough present to complete the staircase and add a 12 square foot rip rap wall to the downhill side. We then moved a short distance down trail and built a run of 6 individual rock check steps.
We did some brushing and treading to finish off in the area we had ended at last time out before returning to steps. The quarrying got much more difficult in our next few sections as we were working on a very steep and treacherous hillside—any wrong step could have been dangerous, so we stepped very carefully and methodically to get rocks for a total of 14 check steps and staircases of 7 & 3 steps.
A big priority was to rebuild an existing staircase that has seen more than a few steps in the wrong direction over the years and was on the verge of falling apart completely. Step by step, we ended up replacing it with a sturdy 10-step staircase with 15 square feet of rip rap armoring.
My personal favorite structure of the hitch was a 6-step staircase at a climbing turn that we were initially uncertain if we’d have the rock source for. After that we had worked through most of the steepest areas and moved much more quickly through several retaining walls, individual check steps, and more brushing and treading moving back towards camp.
Ultimately, we were able to complete 5 staircases containing 14, 10, 7, 6, & 3 steps, installed 29 individual rock check steps, built 3 rip rap walls of 20, 15, & 12 square feet and 3 retaining walls of 8, 5, & 4 square feet, in addition to completing 3/4 mile of brushing & 1/3 mile of tread touch ups.
