[pct-l] Mechanical clearing of trail

[Barry Teschlog]

As with most things, there's a time and place for everything.  The time and place for power tools in routine trail maintenance are outside of Wilderness, when they make sense, and when they're safe given the circumstances. Dianne brings up a point about fire safety - here in Washington, we're required to follow the Industrial Fire Protection Level system that may restrict or ban the use of power saws if the chance of fire is too high.  It's something we check as a matter of routine on our volunteer crew. 


IMO, using hand tools in Wilderness is a statement of what Wilderness ought to be - free from modern machines, to allow us to connect with our more wild and primitive selves - to experience things as our great grandparents did in 1914 or many generations earlier still, 1814 even.  To paraphrase what Kennedy said, we choose to do these things [taking care of trails in the Wilderness by hand] not because they're easy, but because they're hard.  


With hand tools in Wilderness, all it requires is persistence combined with a can-do attitude.