Tree Phones Work Party & Run
Report by Clay Graham / Eastern Washington Adventures
Tree Phones Campground at the Ahtanum State Forest is temporarily closed because of the danger trees, dead lodge pole. The DNR had fallers come in to cut down the dead trees.
On Friday June 5th, 2009 some of the members headed up to Tree Phones to camp for the weekend work party.
Saturday morning around 9:30 AM more members and other volunteers started rolling in. The DNR brought up a chipper to get rid of some of the debris. Volunteers used chain saws to limb the trees and to cut them up to move them out of the camping area. Other volunteers worked to remove the debris.
Most of the volunteers worked until after 3:30 PM. Some went home and we went wheelin’ after dinner. Here are some pictures of the fun.
Here we are on the North Fork Ahtanum Road waiting for the few we left behind in the dust.
The Blue Lake trail had some deep slush water.
I tried to get around the edge but kept getting pulled in.
Then I had a hard time backing out of the slush water.
Test Dummy pulled me out and then tried to run along the edge.
It took a few tries but Test Dummy made it.
Havo now testing the water.
I ran around to the other side by using the pond trail.
By this time Havo was already up the Blue Lake trail and Test Dummy was pulling Tiny around.
I met Havo up on 4W615 where the snow drifts were huge.
The second one in got me.
Looking back at Havo and Tiny.
Test Dummy checking out the tree hole on the trail.
Test Dummy made it around me and pulled me on up and over the snow mound I was stuck in.
The next stop was Blue Lake.
There were only Test Dummy’s, Havo’s and my rig there.
My turn to pull Test Dummy out.
We headed back to see what happen to the others.
On the way back out, Hercules and Tiny came down toward the lake. I had to let them pass in this deep water hole.
Next I ran into Nevada coming down.
Nevada giving it hell.
Havo Jr coming into the area I got stuck earlier.
Havo Jr got stuck and Blind-Pilot pulled him out.
As we were leaving I had to go get stuck.
Blind-Pilot gave me a pull.
After getting back down to the North Fork we headed up toward Darland Mountain to see how far we would get.
There was a cool moon that night.
I made it to the switch back below the Roller coaster trail.
No one else was near where I was. Not a good feeling.
I turned around and headed back. Lucky for me all went well getting back out.
Once I met back up with the group, we all headed back down the North Fork Road.
Along the way we saw some deer and then down the road we saw three young ladies.
They were camping and partying. They flash some of us as we drove by. Talking about wild life. LOL
At McLaine Canyon some headed for home and we headed for camp.
Sunday morning we started work again in the Tree Phones Campground.
It started raining hard around noon. Most of the volunteers were soaking wet and pulled out for home around 2 PM.
We did make a large dent in what needs to be done to reopen the campgrounds.
We still have work to do at Tree Phones.
Thank you to all that came and volunteered to help with the campgrounds maintenance.
We logged 282 volunteer hours with the DNR.
