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In September, With the paper work completed and
confirmed by the state, I could get started. My goal for the fall
of 2003 was to get trail cleared to the property, and then to a
potential building site on the creek side of the property.
Trail existed to my neighbor's cabin south of the
property, which meant I only needed to clear trail from the existing
trail to a building site, about 200 yards. I selected a route for
the trail which run up to the southeast corner of the property and then
along the east edge a short distance before turning west toward the
creek side of the property. Over the course of several trips to
the property, and mainly using the brush cutter, I clear a swath about 8
feet wide through chest high brush with the occasional downed tree
underneath. Cutting brush with the brush cutter made life
easy, the hard part was to get all the cut brush out of the way so you
can keep cutting. I would make a pass over about 10 foot of trail
and then gather the cut brush and hauled it into piles to be burned
later when weather safely permitted. Then make a second pass over
the same area to get to the brush I couldn't get to on the first pass,
and continue on another 10 feet into uncut brush, then clean up the
cutting again. (A wood chipper would be handy for disposing of
brush, but elected to save the money.) The process went on until I
reached the far side of the property. On my last few visits I got
to break thin layers of ice on the small water puddles on the main trail
going in. The advantage of only being 3 miles off the road, is
that it was only a 40 minute trip to spend nights in my truck camper
warm and
comfortable.
Steve Leemhuis and I ran into a deal on telephone
poles, which are great for building boardwalks, bridges, our foundations
for sheds or cabins. The price was $1.00 per foot, the only catch
was we had to haul them. We used Steve's 20 foot car hauling
trailer for the job. While I only bought 3 twenty foot sections,
Steve filled the trailer with all he dare carry for himself.
With the aid of Steve's Polaris Ranger 6 wheeled ATV we pulled the poles
off the trailer and piled them along side the trail near the parking
lot, to be hauled in to our property's by snowmobile in the
winter.
By the time the snow started I had a summer trail
cleared, and a few things stored on the property like a burn barrel, and
a metal box with some tools and tarps. I piled the box on the burn
barrel, stuck the rake up beside (so I could hopefully find it later),
and it and left it for the snow to cover.
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Future
trail
Before
& After. The first cleared trail.
Clear
& Burn
Looking
back toward neighbor's trail |
