CTTT Completes Davy Crockett National Forest Project

by Raymond Fore

President's Day weekend at Davy Crockett National Forest was successful again despite all the efforts of Mother Nature to derail us. Friday, February 15 was spent setting up camp and gathering the needed tools and supplies we'd need to complete the task. Except of the retagging of the Tall Pines Trail and the clean up and organizing of the supply yard/lumber yard, all the work we did during the work session took place in the Big Slough Wilderness area. The challenge in this work was doing it without the help of any type of powered tools OR wheeled vehicles. Four sections of the raised wooden foot bridge on the trail had been washed away in recent flooding.

The bridge crew, made up of Mike Rodgers, Terrence Donovan, Andy Zwarun, Pearlie Green(Forest Service), and myself, Ray Fore recovered the sections, re-established them, and added a cable hand rail. The tree crew, Chuck Lundsted, Raylene Welch, Bob Weglarz, Dwight Riley, and Vick Hines removed several very large trees that had fallen across the 4 C trail. They did this with the use of axes, 6 foot cross cut saws, several smaller saws, and a lot of grunting and groaning. As usual, the Forest Service thought it would take us at least two days to complete those two task. We did it in one and still had time to retag and clear the Tall Pines trail which goes around Ratcliff Lake.

After a night of violent thunder storms, we woke to a clear morning. The clearing and organizing the Forest Service's supply/lumber yard was a fall back task just in case we needed something else to do. While that was being done, two of us and the Forest Service personnel returned to the woods to take inventory of other bridges that needed attention. We identified at least two more days of work in bridge repair and trail clearing. This will be a task we'll take care of later in the year.

Six of us took a side trip Friday evening. We went to Crockett and ate at an excellent restaurant, "Tchoupitoulas". After supper we attended a concert at the Camp Street Cafe featuring Elena James. This fiddle player and singer plays for people like Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. She was great and brought the house down with her rendition of "Orange Blossom Special".

Another successful weekend. It was good to meet new members, and visit with those members we haven't seen in some time.