Jack Menard hiked 1,000 tough vertical feet — bushwhacking through a dense pine forest, hopping over deadfalls and scrambling over loose scree — on a beeline for the top of Crystal Peak, a remote summit in the mountains north of Truckee.
“We’re almost at our starting point,” he said.
There’s no trail up the 8,075-foot mountain, and Menard, trails program coordinator with the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship, was scouting one. For a couple of hours, he and another trail worker, Simon Becwar Berry, ground-truthed a route that had been roughed out in mapping software — verifying every step of it. They graded each leg using a clinometer, a handheld device used to measure the angle of a slope, then marked their progress by tying bits of neon-orange flagging tape to tree branches and saplings…