Last year we talked about national forests being like our favorite sweaters — much loved but getting a bit frazzled around the edges and needing some repairs. The kind of unraveling that happens to older vault toilets, bridges, trails and more.
So, as Aug. 4 rolls around for the fifth year of the Legacy Restoration Fund established by Great American Outdoors Act, let’s check in on five projects mending some of your go-to places to get outside. We’ll start up north in Oregon and work our way down into Southern California.
Pacific Crest Trail — Restoring parts of your bucket list
When hiking the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail, the path you tread might look like nature kindly curated its own tidy trail. But some sections, especially slopes, often get a helping hand from the Pacific Crest Trail Association and the Great American Outdoors Act.
This past year’s work was all about the rocks —more specifically bringing rocks in and maneuvering them into retaining walls and foot paths. The walls help push back erosion while offering a more natural, safer trail for hikers.
Many of those on rock duty were lured in with this intriguing call to work: “Have you ever fancied yourself an amateur stonemason? Always dreamed of playing life-size Tetris with solidified lava?”
Staffers Jake Rawdin and Andy Nguyen along with their crew of volunteers said “yes, please.”
Rawdin added, “I love doing technical rock work as much as I love providing high skill training for enthusiastic volunteers. This section of trail needed a retaining wall and moving boulders almost a quarter of a mile. So I couldn't have asked for a more fun start to the trail season.”
So everyone got busy with rigging and rock slinging, followed by benching and chiseling. Others smashed midsize rocks into smaller reinforcement gravel for repairs on a roughly 20-foot section.
Volunteer Max D’Amato shared a bit more on the intricacies of what rock work means.
“The general rule when searching for rocks: If you can pick it up, it’s too small,” D’Amato said. “More often than not, the rocks we used to lay the foundation needed two or more people to move.”
So if you find yourself at PCT mile 2167.75 staring at Three Corner Rock, send some thanks to the herculean crew who made this happen — for the love of the trail.
Paving the way across three forests
Close to the Oregon border is our next stop — a paving project that spans the Modoc, Klamath and Shasta Trinity national forests and the ancestral lands of the Pit River Tribe.
More specifically, the Medicine Lake Roads Project covers the popular Medicine Lake Recreation Area and the nearby 5,000-year-old Medicine Lake Lava Flow.
Driving the worn roads, the Pit River Tribe Roads Department assessed the cracks and potholes hindering safe access to the area’s beloved landscapes. By June 2024, the Pit River Tribe began fixing the worst sections of the roads. Crews also cleared roadside vegetation, to increase driver’s sight distance and fire resilience.
As of early December 2024, crews completed about 16.5 miles of crack filling and pothole patching, 3.5 miles of paving, and 8 miles of roadside vegetation removal.
According to Tribal Roads Coordinator Kenrick Frank, “It’s awesome to have this opportunity to teach our young native people. It’s not just work. We’re actually teaching them how to operate chainsaws, weed eaters, equipment and teaching them how to pave.”
Better trails, from California’s highest peak to high meadows
Adding to all the trail work, the Inyo National Forest took on three high-priority projects — the Whitney Trail in 2023, the Duck Pass Trail in 2024 and the Golden Trout Creek Trail this year. The group lift for these projects included Inyo National Forest staff and Backcountry Trails Program crews from the California Conservation Corps.
Starting with the Mount Whitney Trail, this popular area suffered from storm damage and deferred maintenance. The crew got to work bringing this high-altitude trail back to life. From the trailhead to just before Trail Camp, crews fixed drains, stabilized trails from erosion and debris slides and even shored up a sunken causeway that had left sections of the trail under water.
On to the popular Duck Pass Trail, which starts in the Mammoth Lakes Basin, crews fixed the general wear and tear that comes from hundreds of visitors a day. This work helped connect many hikers, runners and horseback riders with bigger treks along the Pacific Crest Trail, the John Muir Trial and the John Muir Wilderness.
And finally, the ongoing updates to the Golden Trout Creek Trail, an important artery through the Golden Trout Wilderness. If you’re crossing the Sierra or hiking to the southern tip of Sequoia National Park, you’ll appreciate these trail updates. The trail last saw significant work in 1993. And while the work is holding up well, it’s time for some repairs to make sure old investments are not lost.
The crew just started work in late June and will be on the trail until the end of September 2025.
Bonus — Updated Comforts on the Angeles National Forest
With the three trail projects on the Inyo National Forest, that marks five projects for five years. But who doesn’t love a bonus — especially when it’s Chantry Flats Recreation Area, one of the most heavily visited areas in Los Angeles’ backyard.
If you find yourself in Chantry Flats on the Angeles National Forest, look around for new ADA-accessible water spigots, fresh trash cans and drinking fountains, and a renovated restroom. Items that are often taken for granted, like railings and repaved parking areas and striping, were also updated and reopened just in time for Independence Day 2024.
Even the posts, holding the Chantry Flats sign that welcomes visitors, got a refresh.
All that’s left are the finishing touches of Phase 2. As shared by Forest Engineer Ricardo Lopez, “We need to take out one of our old buildings, that would allow us to build a new shuttle stop for a Transit to Trails — that we hope to do more of here on the Angeles National Forest.”
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