Ditto, and Friends

This was the second day of the blazing training and project. Trevor came back, so we had 6 people again.

After some verbal instructions, we again broke into two groups of 3 people. I think two people is an ideal number on a team, but remember, this was for training, so we wanted either Pete or me to be with a group in training. I was paired with Trevor again, and a young woman named Jackie. It's so great to have younger folks show up to participate.

We encountered hikers on the trail. It turned out to be my friends Kurt and Connie! I do run into them occasionally because they love to hike the NCT, but it's been a while because I've been off on my big hike. Their furry friend is Nola. Of course, we know all hikers will appreciate the new blazes, but it was fun to see people who were glad of the blazes right now. Today!

Connie took a picture of me scraping the bark on a tree- doing the prep work for the person who had the paint. (Oops, I guess I'm actually sawing off an obstructing branch)

There are 4.3 trail miles between M-55 and Koon Road. Our teams worked toward each other, and we hoped we'd meet in the middle today. But we were still a half mile apart when we were all ready to turn around. We each still had to blaze the other direction back to our cars. We really wanted to complete the whole section, but it just wasn't possible today. We didn't get to the cars until 5 pm, and I was really beat. So, if you hike that section, there is still a short "wasteland" in the middle with very poor blazes.

At one point in time, this section was way overblazed. Those blazes are now so faded you can't use them to navigate, but if you were paying attention, you could see multiple pale blazes way too close together. We spent a lot of time scraping and gently spray painting over those. There is nothing about this job that goes quickly. But it's worth it.

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