Monday, Memorial Day 2014 (May 26)
T-33a tree clearing with Tom & Rob


Saturday evening / night Max and I traveled to the T-33a trail as we heard it was open but was blocked by a tree across the trail. Monday was a good weather day and Tom was looking to get out "somewhere". A plan to return to T-33a to clear trees became a goal. Rob ended up joining in for a three stooges day. Good times.




5.5 miles, round trip, 4h49m overall time, average speed 1.1mph
We had perhaps 2 hours of tree cutting.




Heading west from the north edge of Longmont with the town of Lyons as the meeting spot.




Up a switchback or two on the trail.




Peak To Peak Highway at the Pleasant Valley curve.







Spring run-off










The Aspen Tree Swamp




This is what remained of the large tree Max and I cleared two nights prior. We cut back the tree a bit more from the edge of the trail.

There was a comment to get before and after photos for each clearing task. I didn't live up to the task.




The trail had several trees that were similar to this. We stopped perhaps five or seven times to cut something.




Rob's FJ40 wanted one pull up a ledge.







A nice day though clouds are starting to thicken for the afternoon showers.




High enough to have spots of snow still about.




T-Shirt snowball fights - fantastic!




This tree was left alongside the trail though we did remove the limbs extending onto the trail. Our three man crew was perfectly in sync - one cutting, one holding the cut branch / removing it and passing it to the third to toss into the forest.




I didn't quite catch what message Rob had for me.




Something about he only needed ONE, yes, ONE, strap pull the whole day.




Rob & Tom descending a step.
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An odd thing happened. At the night visit, Max and I were on the trail and we were stopped by a large tree crossing the trail. I believed the trail went on just a bit more past the tree. Today, we came to THE end - but there was no tree across the trail. Where did it go? Where were we the prior night? I did not have the prior visit's (after dark, in the rain) track log in my GPS so I'd have to wait until I returned home to compare the log.

The below image shows how the two visits compare. The red line stopped at a tree crossing the trail. The green line, extended past that "blockage". I saw no evidence of a downed tree. Odd.