NSA Colorado Projects

Two Bridges Over Frenchman Creek Open NSA
2006 Trail Maintenance Season

One project down 15 to go! The 2006 NSA trail maintenance season is off to a successful start. The Frenchman Creek project on The Colorado Trail in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness Area on June 22-23 officially began a season with a record number of NSA projects and participating smokejumper volunteers.
The construction of two bridges; cross-cut saw / chainsaw training and certification; a Subaru sedan operating like a mountain goat; a crappie (pronounced “craw pe”) filet fish fry and good stories despite a fire ban. It all came together for another great project in the Colorado high country.
Smoke jumper volunteers included squad leader Rich Hilderbrand, Jimmie Dollard, Warren Pierce, Herm Ball, Ray Carter, Doug Wamsley, and Bill Ruskin. George Miller, CTF, Rick Creekmore, REI, and Jeff Leisey, USFS and Kepler the trail dog also participated.
In September 2006, an NSA trail crew led by Hal Howell climbed to 12, 000’ on the side of Mount Harvard on the wrong trail looking for the Frenchman Creek bridge site only to pass by within a couple of hundred yards. On the way down the crew found the crossing site but ran out of daylight, vowing to return this year and finish the job which was done with typical smokejumper zeal and expertise. A second bridge was constructed and was used as a “hands on” training for saw certification training conducted by the Leadville Ranger District.
In camp for Thursday dinner Jimmie Dollard demonstrated his culinary skills by frying up five pounds of crappies caught at Lake Oolagah, a Corps of Engineers project about 30 miles from Tulsa. Jimmie says the limit is 47 fish per day per person and you can catch that many if you know how and when. The fish were golden brown and served with potato salad, baked beans, tomatoes and washed down with cold beer. Doug Wamsley provided his traditional magnum of Yellow Tail Merlot for all to enjoy and broke out his plastic two-piece wine glass from his special carrying case. Doug claims Yellow Tail is the best selling wine in Colorado. We think Doug just likes the kangaroo on the bottle. It’s a tough life at a smokejumper trail camp.
The road to the project site is four miles of loose rocks with scattered high centering boulders, steep inclines and narrow tread in some places. Just the macho challenge for Herm Ball’s Ram 2500, a Toyota Land Cruiser, a Land Rover and a Nissan 4X4. We all were looking forward to testing our 4X4 driving skills with these assorted high-powered machines. There was also a Subaru 4-door sedan in the convoy. We knew that eventually the sedan would have to be dragged out of the way, and temporarily abandoned by it’s driver, Warren Pierce. To our great consternation, the Subaru performed equally as well as the SUVs raising the question, who needs an SUV anyway if you can climb a rugged Colorado mountain road in a Subaru Mountain Goat sedan? To make matters worse, Pierce rubbed it in our faces for two days and bragged that if you buy a Subaru you get a bright red fire shovel and a years supply of banana flavored marsh mellow filled “Moon Pies” which he forced on us for two days. Even Kepler wouldn’t eat a Moon Pie.