Golden Trout
16 September 2007
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Disclaimer: The views expressed below are my personal observations and
opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Forest
Service or any other government or private entity.
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Compared to its larger cousins such as rainbow or brown trout, the
golden trout is a tiny little fish. What makes the golden trout so
special, besides its magnificent coloring, is the fact that it only
lives in a tiny little part of the world. The Golden Trout Wilderness
is in Sequoia and Inyo National Forests, in the southern California
Sierras, just south of Mount Whitney. Having such a tiny range and
population means that habitat degradation and hybridization are major
threats to the golden trout. Every year some government agencies
(California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Forest Service)
team up with several organizations (Trout Unlimited, CalTrout,
Federation of Flyfishers, etc.) and other volunteers in a collaborative
effort to protect and restore the California Golden Trout. This year I
went on one of the volunteer trips.
One night, while sitting around the camp fire after a hard day of
moving rocks and large branches, the trail crew boss asked all of the
volunteers why we had volunteered for the trip. I wanted to say
something righteous about saving a threatened species of fish or
helping to right the wrongs in our environment. Those are reasons I
volunteered but they're minor compared to my real reason. My main
reason for volunteering was the mules.
Being a wilderness area means there are no vehicles allowed. Even
official government vehicles are not allowed. The only way to get
there is to hike or ride a horse. In our case the humans walked while
a team of mules carried all of our food and heavy supplies. We
spent six days in the wilderness. Carrying everything you need for six
days in a backpack can be a rough, hungry and tiring experience.
Having the mules there allowed us to bring plenty of food and other luxury
items such as tables, camp chairs and fly rods. With the help of the
mules, we spent six days in relative comfort.
Of course the Forest Service didn't pay for the mules just so a bunch of
volunteers could go sight seeing and fly fishing, we were expected to work.
Our primary project for this trip was a headcut restoration. I didn't
understand exactly what that was until I got there and saw the project.
Scroll over the above picture to see the meadow upstream of the headcut. The
stream has not yet eroded away so the meadow is flat, lush and green. The
water table is high and every spring the creek expands to fill large parts of
the meadow where the flood waters slow and nurture the lush meadow.
Downstream of the headcut, erosion has created a gully with steep banks.
The water table has dropped and sage brush has started taking over most of
the meadow. When spring rains flood the creek the water rushes
down the gully creating more erosion and making the problem worse. It
may not look like much in the pictures but once you stand there it is fairly
obvious that the meadow is being changed in a major way.
The Forest Service is looking into what causes the bank erosion that starts
a headcut. All I know is that cattle were introduced to the area about
a hundred years ago and I could see an obvious difference between the meadows
with cattle and the ones without. In 1978 the area was designated as
wilderness which means no vehicles are allowed. Since cows aren't
vehicles, and they were there prior to 1978, grazing is still allowed in much
of the area. No vehicles allowed means we had to do everything by
hand. Even the two wheelbarrows we had required major paperwork before
they could be brought in because having a wheel means they are considered a vehicle.
This particular headcut had been fixed before and the fixes seemed to
be working. We were there to make repairs. We lined the
creek bed with rocks to prevent further erosion then covered the entire
are with branches in an attempt to keep the cattle out. The difficult
part was that there weren't any rocks or branches in the immediate area.
The closest rocks were a good 500 feet away so I'm very glad we had the
wheelbarrows. There was also a large dead tree over by the rocks.
Using axes and a misery saw we cut the dead branches off and hauled them
all the way to the headcut. It certainly wasn't easy work but we
managed to finish it all in two days.
Our next big project was a stream crossing repair. The area is called
Bullfrog Meadow even though it is actually inhabited by the rare Mountain Yellow-legged
frogs. Their legs didn't look yellow to me but I didn't get very
close. We made sure there weren't any frogs in the area before we started
working. I teased the Forest Service biologist that I wanted to see her
dog eat some endangered frogs. Her dog was far too well behaved for that.
Click above to watch a time-lapse video (6 MB) of us rebuilding the badly eroded
trail crossing over Bullfrog Creek. The volunteers hauled boulders from the
hillside in the background while the trail crew did the masonry work at the creek.
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The stream crossing was scheduled to take three days. They must have
expected some slacker volunteers because we finished the project in a
single day. We moved lots of very heavy rocks and by the end of the
day the wheelbarrows were looking pretty ragged. It was worth it though,
the new stream crossing should last for many, many years. We even
finished early enough that we had time for some fishing that afternoon.
We did a couple more trail repair projects on our final work day.
Again, we finished early so we had the entire afternoon off. What
would you do with a day off after nearly a week of hard manual labor in
the wilderness? Well, most of us decided to go fishing in Ramshaw Meadow
which meant a six mile hike over "bitch pass" and back. Two others
decided to summit a nearby peak that was 11,600 feet high. Another volunteer
decided to explore a trail his friend had said was really tough. We had
briefly considered staying in camp to relax and maybe take naps but who
would want to do that when you can go on a long hike through the wilderness
instead?
Being a coffee farmer, I get plenty of outdoor time in my daily
routine. Many of my friends can't fathom why I would want to take time
off and pay for airfare just to go camp in the wilderness and work for
free but I found the trip very rewarding. They didn't work us too hard
and the work was both interesting and rewarding. This isn't the first
volunteer trip I've been on and hopefully it won't be the last.
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