Cats-Up?

This morning we finished the Cancourse’s first all-new trail, thanks to the efforts of 25 volunteers. This was the culmination of work that started in April, with well over 50 people involved at various times, for a total of about 400 person-hours of effort. The trail is the cat’s meow, and will only improve as it settles from use and rainfall.

Speaking of cats, this trail needs a name, and we tentatively propose “Cats-Up”, in honor of the cat whose skull we found up there when designing the trail. If you love/hate this name, or you have suggestions for this and/or future trails, please let us know (email us, comment on this blog post, etc.). For future trails, we think it will be fun to give the people who build the trails collective influence over naming, but we still need to work out the details.

Kitty Corner

Kitty Corner is the final resting place of a large house cat or perhaps bobcat. Alas, we found the kitty years too late to help it.

That way

The trail goes that way!

Pine cone

Pine cone, for me?

French drain

Someone left a handsome French drain behind.

Almost done

Almost done, at the top of the trail.

Shifting gears

We are going to, ahem, shift gears for the next few months, and take on smaller projects while we make more detailed trail network plans. For example, we have some erosion restoration pilot projects slated for autumn 2019, and it is important to effectively eliminate motorcycle incursion and install signage around the treatment areas. We also hope to do some small-scale trail repair of some heavily eroded trail sections, so that we can gain experience regarding whether the trails can be repaired rather than replaced. As autumn nears we will likely design and build a new downhill flow trail as a mate to Cats-Up.

Our next trail work party will be 9am-noon on July 28 (see calendar event for details), close to the top of the Cancourse, where we plan to do some minor rerouting that will naturally reduce speed as riders approach a dismount point. If you join us, you’ll get a free hike/ride just reaching the work site. Don’t miss this deal!