Yes, It's Spelled with Two S's

I had an interesting pack today. As you can see from the photo, it involves 12-foot 4X4's. These and the slats in the panniers are the components of Mary Douglass' new footbridge. Her cabin is on the East Fork, across the stream from the others in the group.

The "Main Canyon" crossing at cabin #67 is relatively flat with good stepping stones, and the crossing just upstream between cabins #64 & #69 has a plank bridge. So it's easy to get from the trail to the mouth of the East Fork. But the East Fork is narrow and rocky, and to cross again to Mary's cabin can be rough.

She used to have a bridge, but it washed out in either October, 2004 or January 2005; I don't remember which. The bridge, like that at cabin #64, was not fixed. It was chained to a tree, and storm waters would wash it parallel to the stream. One simply had to replace it across the stream once in a while. Well, it must have gotten splintered in the storm by a fast-moving rock or log (another good reason not to cross flood waters!).

Mary's son, Dave Douglass, brought in a new bridge for her. He made it with two 4X4's to span the stream, and wooden slats for a surface. Everything was pre-cut, pre-drilled, and pre-assembled. Then he numbered all the parts and disassembled it for packing.

This is the perfect opportunity to show how I pack such long items on such little animals (smaller than mules and horses, that is). The 12-foot lumber is extremely difficult to pack to half of the cabins using this method. As you can see, the donkeys can't make the tight turns and switchbacks. It would also require more than one packer. But it is the safest and easiest way in the "Main Canyon"; and I can do it alone.

In this case, the 4X4's were only about 30 lbs each. I also needed to pack in the slats. Since I was by myself, and two donkeys connected in this fashion is all one man to handle, I couldn't use more than Bill & Slim. So what I did was saddle them with the panniers, something we don't normally do with lumber. I tied one end of each 4X4 to the front cross of the front animal, then the other ends to the rear cross of the rear animal. This has always worked for me before, but because the ropes have to be looser than normal, the lumber has a tendency slip and slide. Today I wrapped duct tape around each rope and the lumber (click the inset photo to enlarge). This really did the trick. Once the 4X4's were in place, I put the slats in the panniers on end. A happy accident occurred when I cinched up the bags with the short lumber - they made very sturdy slings for the 4X4's. This was not necessary, but reassuring.

Everything arrived safely, and without any mid-trail adjustments. Dave will probably put the bridge in place this weekend.