Connecting the Dots of Life: Returning to the Yolla Bollys

During a week of trail restoration in the remote Yolla Bollys, BFTA volunteers worked alongside former Forest Service trail worker Vaughn Hutchins, whose return to the mountains he helped steward decades ago revealed the enduring connections between trails, wilderness, memory, and community.

A Lifetime in the Wilderness

From June 6–13, the Bigfoot Trail Alliance sponsored a crew of seven volunteers who made the long drive into the remote southern Yolla Bollys to work on the Summit Trail and several trails surrounding Solomon Peak. Included in our team was seventy-two-year-old Vaughn Hutchins, who had begun his career roaming this wild country on the payroll of the Mendocino National Forest.

From 1979 to 1990, Vaughn worked on trails, fish, and wildlife projects, restoration efforts, and just about anything else that needed doing. As he described it, “I was a jack of all trades and master of none.” Those years also nurtured what would become a lifelong passion for photography.

Over time, these mountains and the people connected to them came to occupy a special place in Vaughn’s heart. That became clear as I listened to Vaughn and longtime packer Kenny Graves reminisce about former colleagues, familiar peaks, forgotten camps, and trails stretching across the landscape.

“My place was the Middle Fork of the Eel watershed,” Vaughn told me. “Over the years I really felt a sense of responsibility for that land.”

Even after the 2020 August Complex Fire burned more than a million acres across Northern California—including over 600,000 acres within the Mendocino National Forest—these mountains still hold remarkable pockets of resilience. Majestic incense cedars, ponderosa and Jeffrey pines, sugar pines, green meadows, and cold springs continue to endure amid a transformed landscape.

Vaughn still felt the magic.

“And this is probably my last chance to get up here,” he observed.

We established camp at Last Camp, a wildflower-dotted flat that served as our home for the week. After long days clearing trail, evenings were spent around camp sharing stories. Vaughn’s stories ranged from his years working in the Yolla Bollys to six months spent cycling across New Zealand. He reflected on returning to these mountains with his triplets in 2009 and later with his son Bryce in 2018. In 2014, he celebrated his 60th birthday atop Shell Mountain.

One Volunteer’s Lifelong Connection to Wilderness

On this trip, one goal stood above the rest: reaching the summit of 7,589-foot Solomon Peak.

Trails in the Yolla Bollys tend to go straight up and straight down. The route was made even more challenging by years of encroaching brush and fading tread along steep hillsides. The climb is demanding for anyone, but especially for someone who has spent recent years managing atrial fibrillation.

Of course, Vaughn made it.

The day after we returned home, Vaughn sent me a haiku. In just a few lines, it captured the deeper meaning of the week and the threads that connect our lives across decades of wandering, working, and caring for wild places:

Yolla Bolly trails
Connecting the dots of life
We are Wilderness.

For those of us fortunate enough to share the trail with Vaughn, the words felt less like a poem and more like a truth. Trails connect places, but they also connect generations. They carry stories, memories, friendships, and a sense of responsibility forward through time. In the Yolla Bollys, those connections remain as enduring as the mountains themselves.

— Rees Hughes