Friday-Monday • April 1-3
San Rafael Wilderness Overnight
Where:  Judell canyon trail, camping at spike camp half way down canyon. This is an easy 2.5 mile hike from the trailhead at Santa Barbara potrero to our camp site.

Hello Everyone!

I would like to invite you to join us on a 3 day trail maintenance trip in the San Rafael Wilderness. Help us continue our efforts on the Judell Canyon trail. We just completed a very successful trip clearing the bottom mile of the Judell canyon trail. The Judell canyon is one of the nicest areas on the forest. Help us get the bottom half of the trail safe for packstock travel. See description below and let me know if you would like to sign up. Arrangements can be made for those who wish to attend but cannot take a day off work on Friday. Those folks can drive up to the trailhead after work and take advantage of daylight savings and hike the easy 2.5 miles in that evening. We will have a nice hot meal waiting for you and Ice cold beer. We just need to coordinate that ahead of time so we know who will be coming in late.

I will send out additional info to those who sign up as the project nears. Feel free to contact me with any questions:

Mike Smith
Volunteer Trail Crew
(805) 605 1735 office • (805) 895 9329 cell • (805) 605 1741 fax

What to Know
Trail work will consist mostly of cutting overgrown brush from trail corridor. We will use hand tools only, as power tools are not allowed in designated wilderness areas. The trail portion we intend to work is within the San Rafael Wilderness. We will use loppers, hand saws, pulaskis as we work in small teams working our way down the trail. We will have a few tools to carry in from the trailhead, but we have most of the tools needed cached in the camp area already. I will be using 5 packgoats to help carry in the food for the Friday night meal and the Saturday night BBQ and plenty of ice cold beer. If You have never heard of, or ever seen packgoats before, not to worry they are friendly, and no they don’t stink.

What to Bring
This is a backpacking type trip, bring your normal items for backpacking overnight 2 nights including food. Nights could be cold, plan accordingly. The LPFA will provide a complete meal on Friday night and a complete BBQ MEAL on Saturday night. Bring insect repellant as gnats, mosquitos, deerflies and ticks may or may not be present. I discovered several years ago that Banana Boat brand sunscreen will stop the deerflies from biting. Poison oak is always a possibility year round, so bring your tecnu or whatever you prefer to rid yourself of it. A good shade hat is recommended as well. Bring a small day pack or fanny pack to carry your lunch and water on Saturday when we are doing our trail work.

PPE
Required for trail work that you must bring: Eye protection (sunglasses ok), work gloves, sturdy work type or hiking boots, long sleeve shirts and pants. • PPE supplied by USFS: Hard Hats • Prior Trail Work Experience Needed: None

Day by Day Trip Plan
Friday the 1st, we will meet @ the USFS ranger station in Santa Maria at 07:00 am. The ranger Station is on 1616 N. Carlotti drive in Santa Maria, just off the Donovon exit. We will carpool from there 2 hours to the Judell trailhead. Folks coming in from the east over hiway 33 can meet us at the locked gate at cox flat @ 0900. We will hike the easy 2.5 miles downhill to Camp. After arriving at camp we will set up the campsite and possibly do some trailwork that day for an hour or two.

Saturday the 2nd,  We will leave camp in the morning at approx 0800 and begin our trail work on the lower half of the Judell canyon trail. We will bring our lunches with us. There is good water all along the canyon to filter as needed. At approx 2:30 we will we will begin the hike back to camp and get the BBQ meal going. .

Sunday the 3rd, We will break camp and hike back up the Judell Trail to our vehicles.

Total Participants
10-12 total.