Graham Family Farm NW

Rimrock Trail 4W608 Work Day
Report and photos by Clay Graham / Eastern Washington Adventures

On August 29th, 2009 we met up in Tieton at Waycrazy’s house.
We hooked up the Forest Service trailer and headed to Rimrock’s Trail 4W608.

At the 4W608 trail head near FS1200 the Forest Service had brought in some rock last year for volunteers to use for the mud holes on the trail.

• The idea is to put bottoms on the deep mud holes on 4W608.
  Since the holes are getting too deep to drive through the trail has been getting wider and by-passes are being made.
  It is sad this trail may be closed because of all the damage users are continuing to do. We volunteered a day a year ago to help keep this trail open. We added many loads of rock to the first sets of holes.
  On Saturday we volunteered to help another day on 4W608.
  The rock we added the year before was buried from people making the mud holes wider just to throw mud.
  The rock seemed to work where the holes did not get any deeper.

Guido loaded the first load of rock.

Using Fish’s modified F250 to pull the Forest Service trailer, we were off to add more rock to the first mud hole.

Roller-Bear packing the rock.

Looking back at the rock at the 4W608 trail head.

We added another load to the first hole.

After getting loaded again we drove up the trail to the bad area of the trail.

Here we stopped to see where we where going to turn this big truck around to dump.

Wow. We were real shocked to see what was mud hole after mud hole turned into one big mud bog.
This is 10 times as bad as it was a year ago.

Four-running finding a lot of trash where people must have been out watching there buddies tear up the trail.

Here we are back at the rigs with a plan.

Moving up the trail.

We skipped over some holes to start on the real bad part.

There was a wide by-pass so fish was able to get the truck and trailer turned around.

Here goes the first of many loads in the hole.

Time to move the rock by hand to build a road.

Down the hill for another load.

Roller-Bear ran the tractor in the afternoon.

There were some big rocks.

Heading back up the trail.

We had some problems with the hitch and had the trailer come off coming out of a hole.
We tightened the hitch some, put the trailer back on and we were on our way again.

Guido and Four-running adding rock to some holes.

Dumping in the big bog again.

We have a lot of work ahead.

The kids running down the trail to go look for trash.

Four-running and Guido building up the trail so the trailer can get farther in.

Fatboy helping too.

On the way back down the nut broke off the hitch ball.
Here is the trail fix.

We made it back to the trail head and got another ball on a mount.
Fish forgot his hitch key so we had to move the ball over. It was on tight.

We finely were ready to load again.

Back at the mud bog we found a little frog. We moved it out of the hole so he wasn’t smashed.

The guys worked on moving rocks to get the trailer in.

Getting ready to dump.

After the load was dumped the volunteers place the rocks so the trail was passable through this section.
It started to rain and we were burnt out. A group meeting to talk about calling it a day.

The next two pictures will show how deep the hole was.
This picture was from before we started.

After

Back at the trail head Waycrazy had to move the rock back into the pile.

This was Wrangler’s first trip to the trails.
She puked as soon as we hit the trail because of the bumps and then again later.
She had a good time running around with the kids.

On this day we logged 80 volunteer work hours with the Forest Service.
Bill Kabrich volunteered 3 hours of his time transporting the tractor that Burrows Tractor let us use.
Thank you to Burrows Tractor and thank you to all that volunteered that helped out to keep 4W608 open.

Note:
Please do not spin your tires in the mud on the trails for fun.
Spinning tires for fun is one of the ways the mud holes start and hold water.
After the holes are started then others spin their tires trying
to get out of the mud holes and the mud holes grow into mud bogs.
Others make illegal by-passes to go around the mud holes.
Then the trail gets closed since it cost money to rebuild the trail.
Volunteers that work on these trails help to keep them open,
but on this trail the damage is growing faster than what is being fixed.
Tread Lightly!