Moose's Tooth Brewery, Anchorage
Rachel, Laura, Me, Claire, Will and Chase and the 500EH helicopter! Loading up
During the ride...
Saying "goodbye"

I rode in a helicopter for the first time today!!! A crew of us from work were flown into a remote unmaintained trail to log it out. The trail is not for the feint of heart because it has some really hairy river crossings. There used to be huge wooden bridges on this trail and it was quite nice and well-maintained. It was fairly popular because it was the tail end of a point to point hike from Seward to Hope. However, mother nature took it's tole and swept the bridges right away so now, it is an overgrown, brushy, boggy and loggy mess. We were briefed by the helicopter pilot on safety and then we flew for about 20 minutes and he dropped us off in a gravely sand bar in the middle of Boulder Creek. We then proceeded to orient ourselves and hike down the trail in 3 pairs (a sawyer and a swamper). We leapfrogged each other down the trail cutting out fallen trees. Will and I were able to clear out 20 trees before the sprocket on the end of the bar got jammed into the bar and made the chainsaw very unsafe to operate. I feel very lucky that I wasn't hurt especially since I wasn't wearing my safety glasses (they were all fogged up and I couldn't see what I was sawing). Will and I were so disappointed and crestfallen at this point. You see, our crew rarely gets to do anything like this and we were excited to be able to log out a trail. Will and I both have histories of being on wilderness trail crews where logging out cross- cut style is almost all you do. So we were sad that we couldn't saw for the rest of the day. Instead, we proceeded to chop off as many branches as we could for the other saw teams and we actually removed 4 more logs! At around 5:00 pm we realized that we were going to have to abandon the log out effort in order to make it to our pick up location (about 6 miles from our drop off location) on time. We hauled ass over some of the sketchiest trail that I've been on, falling into holes hidden by 8 foot tall devil's club and cow parsnip and skittering on narrow ledges with a sharp drop off to the roiling river below. We reached a river crossing that was not safe to wade through so we scouted for a fallen log. We found one that worked but I was fairly nervous crossing and carried my backpack across first and then went back for the dolmar of gas. Laura actually slipped and fell but caught herself with her arms and legs so she was hanging under the log. Chase crawled out to help her and the rest of us uttered words of encouragement. I do not know what we would have done had Laura fallen into the freezing cold, fast-moving water. I am glad we didn't have to deal with that. Our pick up point was still 1.5 miles away and there was another big river crossing and a lot of crazy trail to go in about 45 minutes. As we were recouping after Laura's scare we heard the helicopter flying overhead. We radioed in and asked if then could pick us up on a sand bar in the next big river crossing which was about 150 yards away. They obliged and we burst out of the bushes onto the river bank just as the helicopter started circling to look for us. It made a tight landing and we loaded up and took off for the ride home. We were all wet and tired and happy despite the fact that we had to leave at least 25 trees across the trail to be cut by the next trail crew, next year!