Muskeg Warriors

After all the beautiful weather we've been having, Mother Nature delivered us a swift kick in the rear to remind us that we are indeed in southeast Alaska. The week has been cool, misty, and drizzly, and the trick is in staying dry. Rubber rain gear keeps everything out but you sweat buckets on the inside, the thin stuff breathes better but soaks through eventually and gets trashed, and going without leaves you a soggy, muddy mess by the end of the day. The best you can do is figure out your own system by mixing and matching.
Whatever your rain gear preference the rubber boots are nonnegotiable. People come here for the first time and scoff at Xtra Tuffs as funny looking and impractical for trail work. True, they don't offer the same protection as leather boots (coated neoprene does little against flying rocks), but there's nothing better for mucking around in the slop and glop that forms as soon as it starts to rain. Not to mention the muskegs (Alaskan for "bogs"). They range from mats of sphagnum moss, capable of holding 15 to 30 times its weight in water, to sloppy organic muck; regardless of composition they are WET.

Most of this week I worked up at Perseverance trail, a project funded with Economic Recovery money. The trail leaves from the Ward Lake recreation area and continues about 5 miles up to Perseverance Lake. Our work consists of removing the boardwalk, cutting in reroutes for the trail, and filling it in with gravel. On Thursday, while others were wrestling with a particularly stubborn culvert, Brady and I joined Andrew, the crew lead, in tackling a large section of muskeg. We had already ripped up boardwalk from above and maneuvered it down a brushy slope to use as a base for the trail. Using them as guidelines, Andrew fired up the chainsaw and proceeded to drag it through the thick mat of moss. You could hear him giggling as the muck flew.

That done, Andrew continued on to another area and Brady and I were given the task of digging out the severed sections to about 8 inches deep, and then laying in the boards to form a foundation for the gravel. He grabbed a shovel, I armed myself with a pulaski, and we went to town. I discovered that the best method was hacking out a row with the tool, setting it aside, and then excavating the severed chunks with my bare hands. Gloves and sleeves just got saturated with muskeg juice, which smells like the decomposing matter from which it's formed. Mucking along, I took a step and almost lost my leg to the swamp. As I retreated, it filled itself in to an innocent high point once more.

"Careful, Brady", I said, "That spot's really deep."

"Really?" he asked, and came over to investigate. He prodded it once, twice with the shovel, and on the third poke, SLORP, the shovel all but disappeared into the ooze. We stared as water started gushing up against the handle. With a mighty tug Brady pulled the tool out, and a geyser exploded up from the puddle's surface. The water in our trench started to rise rapidly as we watched with eyes agog and jaws dropped. Oh crap!

"Really, Brady?" I demanded, "Did you really have to see how deep it was?" He gave a helpless shrug. As our boardwalk quickly disappeared underwater we sprang into action, racing to the downhill side and digging a drainage for all we were worth. Brady wielded the pulaski like a wild man and I threw moss aside with my bare hands. Soon enough we'd formed the bed for a rushing stream and our newly created reservoir was steadily draining. We stood there breathing hard, watching the crisis seep away. Andrew came ambling by, took a look at the carnage of mud and moss and muck, observed "Looks like you guys found some water", and just kept walking.