Hi everyone,
Here’s a quick update on road and trails conditions out on the Research Forests:
Roads update: We still have a contracted excavator working on clearing roads on the Forest, though their progress has temporarily slowed as they are also providing road maintenance following recent timber sales. Many of the shorter roads remain blocked by trees, though the majority of the “through” roads have been opened (500, 580, 582, 600 (from Oak Creek to 680), 680, 610, and 700). Most of the 600 (Patterson) Road is still blocked by trees. If you have a question about a specific road, please send it my way.
Trails update: Section 36 Loop and Powder House Trails still have many trees blocking access. Banzai has not yet been cleared, and a few trees remain to be removed on Alpha, Ridge, and Old Growth Trails. The upper portions of Dan’s, Extendo, and Horse all have “merchantable” trees left across them; plans are to remove these trees intact to be sold, so we are waiting to remove them until we can get the proper equipment on-site.
We have made a lot of progress in the last two weeks, and volunteers have helped immensely by clearing trails by hand and working to prepare trees to be removed by Research Forests sawyers. We’ve had several offers of volunteer help recently to clear the remaining trees from roads and trails with chainsaws. While we greatly appreciate the offer, we don’t have an easy way to allow volunteers to run chainsaws on the Forest, due to OSU regulations and safety considerations, so we are completing our chainsaw work in-house using our staff, student employees and contractors, and asking our visitors to leave their chainsaws at home.
We know there is still quite a bit of work left to be done on our roads and trails. With finals week and winter break in the near future, people are starting to head out of town. We will be continuing to work on clearing roads and trails, and we anticipate the pace may slow down a bit until the new year. We will post volunteer opportunities that arise, which may be into the new year.
Thank you for your patience as we weather the (post) storm through the holiday season…
And thank you to all of our volunteers who have helped make this clean-up period move as quickly as it has!
Ryan N. Brown
Recreation Manager
OSU Research Forests