Hi All,

With Garnet's help getting the helicopter, We (Mickey Miller from
Alligator Amblers & I) set down near the trail on July 10th, Monday for
a day trip to re-blaze the burned area. We followed the trail south to
the 24 mm carsonite post and then painted our way north. We painted any
and all blazes in both directions. We re-blazed two burned areas which
consumed most of our time trying to locate the trail. The fire was bad,
it burned pine trunks up 20+ ft. , burned down lg. Sabal palms.
Between the hurricanes and the fire we lost a lot of blaze trees. There
was no trace of the trail in some areas, I had to go on memories.

Our final location was UTM:
17  04 96 237
28 80 757
This had a burned carsonite mm (unreadable). Leading up to this location
the trail was very confusing, so I only used flagging, to mark through
the area , I think it swings along parallel to the buggy road for
several yards before crossing. This road shows on the orthophoto topo
Thompson pine Island /Immokalee 4 SE
 

Bad area that needs to get burned, Brush is 5-6' high. A large, crotch
high ( 30" + caliper) pine (blaze tree) is down across the trail the
next blazed pine is down, parallel to trail. With its root ball
blocking the trail. Flagged this area and painted a wax myrtle.
17 04 96 564
28 80 183
On plotting this on my topo, I find, (no surprise), that I have
previously flagged it as a bad area .

According to my gps and map we only worked in a sq. kilometer area, but
like I said this is a chronically overgrown area. There are two landing
zones in the neighborhood , as we got dropped off at one and picked up
at another. Maybe between black powder season and general gun we could
fly back in and do some more work in the area when they aren't hunting.
That is, if the rain stops.......... ;-)


Nina

Photos by Nina Dupuy