05/02/2026
Last week’s “Scorpions On The Trail” Work Summaries
Saturday April 25th - On Saturday 4-25-2026, Brian and Garrett returned to Separation Lake Trail, taking advantage of clear skies and a beautiful day. They made their way down the trail to the destruction area, and (following nicely detailed directions from the McKenzie Trail Crew) flagged out the suggested reroute/diversion around the piled jackstraws of logs. The reroute will include cutting about 6-8 logs (one is about 36" but should be fairly straightforward) and a good amount of tread work. The total length is maybe 150 feet, and it ties very nicely back into both ends of the trail. We will coordinate with the McKenzie Trail Crew on that project sometime in the future.
Afterwards, they continued on and resumed logging out where we left off last time. The objective was to get the rest of the scouted logs cut out. Once they finished up with the bigger timber beyond George Creek (and found a pair of safety glasses in the process), they finally made it down to the bottom of the canyon and had lunch in sight of Separation Creek. Afterwards, they skipped over a 30" log to cut out the rest on up the trail, then returned back to the big log for the final project of the day. The big log was a lot of sawing, but on the ground and straight forward. They ended up staying later to finish up and finally got the big round pushed out of the way.
Made the loooooong slog back up out of the canyon, getting back to the car right at 6:00pm. Tired but very satisfied that everything was accomplished. So, the trail is logged and clear from the TH all the way to Separation Lake, except for the destruction area. We'll coordinate work there with the McKenzie Trail Crew for sometime in the future.
Thanks for the great day!
Saturday April 28th - Brian and Garrett decided to take advantage of the low snowpack and headed up to Olallie Trail out of Pat Saddle Trailhead on Tuesday 4-28. We drove up the "back way" due to the construction closure at Cougar Dam. The road was snow free with a few down log messed that had been minimally cut out enough to allow a car to pass through (hopefully they get cut back further soon). On one section, there was a logging project that had chewed and roughed up the roadbed a bunch, but not enough that we couldn't drive over it (hopefully that gets smoothed out/repaired when they are done). Made it to Pat Saddle Trailhead and used the chainsaw to cut out two logs across the trailhead loop parking area. As a bonus, we chainsaw cut out two more logs on French Pete Creek Trail just outside the Wilderness Boundary. Afterwards, we finally geared up for crosscut work and headed up Olallie Trail towards Olallie Mountain.
We had average downfall to cut out while still in the green forest, then encountered lots of piled log messes as soon as reaching the first old open burn area, approx .6 miles from the trailhead. We spent time looking over some of the messes, having lunch, and cutting out a few hazard rollers (in prep for having a big crew working in there later). We also cut out a few more logs that our two person crew could manage, then decided to hike up to the jct with Olallie Mountain Trail to see what we could find.
We discovered that winter was not kind to Olallie Trail. We counted over 100 logs that need to be addressed up to the jct. Some are small-ish, some can be moved with bars, and some are large and complex. There are a number of complex logs on the open sideslope on the last uphill section just before reaching the Olallie Mountain Trail jct. We briefly looked further down the trail and counted a dozen more logs before loosing sight of the trail. All of this will take multiple crews multiple days to get cut out and clear.
So, plenty of work to do on Olallie Trail just to even reach the jct with the Mountain Trail, with some areas having some complex log tangles (25"+). The work starts about .6 miles from the trailhead, so a big crew with lots of saws and bars will not have far to hike before the fun starts.
No shortage of work for us this year!
Thursday April 30th - Nine Scorpion crew members drove to the Chuckle Springs Trailhead and started working on restoring the tread from the spur trail from the parking lot down to Chuckle Springs and to the junction with the Middle Fork trail. Many crew members filled their water bottles with cold spring water.
We then continued downstream where we logged out the previous week restoring and repairing the fire damaged tread. We made it past the burnt second bridge and filled in large holes with large rocks and made the trail both visible and decent. We still have about 1/8 of a mile to log out between Chuckle Springs and Indigo springs plus about a mile more of tread to restore. We also need to log out and work tread upstream from the Chuckle Springs/MFT junction.
We hope to see you on the trail soon.
Next week's projects:
Tuesday May 5th - Fall Creek trail chainsaw logout
Sign up link: https://bttr.im/hnjnb
Tuesday My 5th - Erma Bells/Williams Lk XC-logout
Sign up link: https://bttr.im/ixkvg
Thursday May 7th - Erma Bells/Williams Lk XC-logout continued
Sign up link: https://bttr.im/b13gp