Towards the end of each season I’d begin “winterizing” my trails—that is, digging out established drainage channels to keep snowmelt from eating away at the trail tread come spring. I’d spend days at a time tending waterbreaks, mostly in late spring and then again in the fall. For the uninitiated: “waterbreaks” are low-lying barriers made of half-buried rocks, strategically placed to divert water off the trail. Keeping them working as intended is something of an art: to clear one properly takes time, forethought, and knowledge gained through experience. (Doing a slapdash job is time wasted; one twenty-minute thunderstorm will fill inadequately cleared diversions with sand and debris. They overflow. And then you have an erosion problem.) ◦◦◦◦◦ It was clear from the start that there was no way I’d ever be able to build all the waterbreaks my forty-plus miles of trail needed—it would take a full-time trail crew. Once or twice a season I’d buckle down and construct a few new ones; maybe bust out two in a day’s time if the right kind of rock was near at hand. But that was it. After a while I figured out that, in lieu of building proper waterbreaks, I could just excavate a simple channel, piling the material below to form a little dam-wall. These “drainage dips” work quite well if dug out frequently. Problem is, if you have heavy spring snowmelt or lots of summer thunderstorms, running water quickly fills unreinforced diversions with sand and they then overflow. And when multiple drainage diversions fail, the runoff—particularly on steep downhills—often ends up coursing down long stretches of trail, trapped in the groove. Runoff accelerates wherever the trail’s gradient increases and, if multiple drainage channels fail, a single heavy downpour can carve out a deep, narrow defile in just minutes. ◦◦◦◦◦ Sadly, countless miles of seldom-if-ever maintained trails in the Sierra have become stone-filled ditches that can never be restored. For this reason I was fanatical when it came to tending my trails’ drainage needs and, during the last few weeks of the season, would typically spend days at a time doing heavy shovel work. Done by the book, digging out a waterbreak or dip requires shifting a shocking amount of material. Loose rock is removed and whatever’s left gets tossed back onto the trail just downslope. An often-neglected but vital step is digging out the “runway”—the area just off-trail where sediment drops out as the runoff slows. Ideally, there needs to be lots of room for deposition and, better yet, a little increase in gradient so that sand and organic debris gets washed farther downhill. If not, all that material starts to backfill into the trail, eventually rendering the drain ineffective. ◦◦◦◦◦ I’ve spent a significant portion of my life shoveling out drainage diversions. Having had lower back issues starting when I was a teenager (due to a couple of slightly malformed lumbar vertebrae), all that twisting-while-lifting was always hard on the ol’ body. Accordingly, a great many of my log entries include mention of aching backs. These are occasionally followed by an ambiguous stock phrase: “Life of a ranger.”—this, a generic, wry commentary on less-than-pleasant aspects of living and working in the backcountry.
5 Oct (Sat) Not too sore today after yesterday’s shovel-fest. Hung out by the stove all morn, working on this log and reading. But…time grows short and there’s still many many waterbreaks yet to clear. Walked down to the Cascade Creek trail and started up Harriet Hill with shovel in hand. Haven’t worked this stretch all season and the waterbreaks and dips were full of sand and loose rock and pulverized mule poop. Many of the dips were full to the point of being non-functional. Dug out dozens of ‘em, which amounted to hundreds of shovel-fuls of sand and, of course, the frequent slamming of shovel-tip into buried stones…resulting reverberations rattling my bones, boi-oi-oing! Down on my knees in a cloud of dust; scooping, scraping, tossing rocks, flinging dirt ‘til arms started going numb. Copious sweat mixed with airborne dirt leaving arms and face covered with a thin layer of salty mud…more self-abuse. Life of a ranger…. ◦◦◦◦◦ Worked as far as Cascade Falls. Back screaming for mercy by this time so I called it quits and stashed my shovel. Clambered down into the gorge to wash off some of the filth and drink deep from the cool waters. Visited the falls up close and personal—such a magical place! Then, like yesterday, climbed up the other side of the mini-gorge and contoured back toward the cabin. Took a slightly different route this time; again, battled that horrible jungle of white fir saplings down low and, again, came out right at Cranney’s Meadow. ◦◦◦◦◦ Home at 6:00, thoroughly beat after three days of shoveling in a row—pretty much the most abusive activity for my poor beleaguered spine. I dropped my pack, plopped down in the folding chair by my bed, and had just started taking off my boots when—groan!—I heard someone outside. On the porch. A knock on the door. “Hello?” A youngish man squeezed through the door with giant pack still on his back. I knew this person but it took a second to place him. Kurt. I was momentarily stunned and speechless—the guy was talking away but I barely heard over my brain-spin. This fella Kurt (whose last name I’ve forgotten) was an interpreter and front desk person in Bridgeport for a couple-three summers before getting fed up with the FS and moving back to Indiana. That was a couple of years ago. There was never an opportunity to get to know one another when he was around but I recall him being very sharp, very professional…always seemed really on top of things when I happened to be in the office and heard him on the phone or chatting up visitors. Unfortunately, the very! last! thing I needed just then was an unexpected visitor and having to forcefully switch into host-slash-entertainer mode. Kurt immediately sensed my reserve—his discomfort was manifest. He just stood there, uncertain what to do. But when he said Roy Wood (his fellow-Hoosier friend and mentor who’s been in charge of our front desk for the last several years) (who I also barely know) was right behind him and another friend as well, I quickly lightened up and said, “Come on in. Take a load off.” Thank gawd! This changed everything. It’s so much easier on me to have more than one guest; they can entertain themselves and I don’t have to make conversation. I’ve always hated that thing where people feel compelled to talk talk talk, with never a pause. It just wears me out. What can I say? I’m basically antisocial. ◦◦◦◦◦ A minute later Roy showed up with a young woman of about twenty or twenty-one. Kristen, neighbor and childhood friend of Kurt’s (apparently not his girlfriend) is an urban, Midwestern gal who’s plainly never seen nuthin’ like this before. A real-live log cabin in the woods! A scruffy ranger! She was flat-out floored by the whole scene. Kristen had just entered a different time zone, and I don’t mean Pacific Standard: another century. She walked through the door, gazing all around with a look of childlike wonder on her face, her mouth literally hanging open. After a few seconds she gushed—this was so cute: “You have to…you have to be like…like a real mountain man to live here!” It had me remembering my own initial reaction to this place, which wasn’t all that different come to think of it. (Substitute immature, suburban, Southern California boy….) ◦◦◦◦◦ I adjourned to my hammock [thirty feet up a lodgepole pine in front of the cabin] with a beer while the three settled in and got my little bit of alone time—all that I really needed as it turned out. It smoothed out my sourpuss attitude and got me to the state of mind where I could actually enjoy an evening spent socializing with virtual strangers. Even whipped up a quick’n’easy dinner for all: a mess of stir-fried veggies and garlicky pasta. We feasted with the stove crankin’ away, very cozy. ◦◦◦◦◦ All of us feeling pretty beat so it was bed by 9:30. My visitors slept inside—Kurt and Roy in the loft, Kristen on the other bunk. (Tomorrow they proceed to Rainbow Canyon.) Oh, but it was a joyous relief to turn off the lantern and crawl into my bag and breathe the long sigh of a well-done day.
→ 3½ miles → 3 visitors → 40 WBs & dips cleaned → a ton o’ stone tossed
Copied on page one of this volume of Piute Log:
“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech.”
—Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac
©2026 Tim Forsell 5 Nov 2026
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