Working it
Trail work party 5
On September 8 we had our fifth trail work party, during which we started on a new flow trail. Carey Ward made an excellent name suggestion: Downward Dog (a yoga pose). This trail is a companion to the Cats Up climbing trail, and it’s hard to imagine a better name, so we’re going with it for now, and probably forever!
Check out these pictures of volunteers and their handiwork. They were so efficient that we wrapped up work half an hour early.
The upper portion of the trail crosses a deeply eroded gully twice. The berm that starts at the second crossing utilizes the bank of a deep cut in the mountainside that looks as if it was created by the previous owner in a failed attempt to block motorcycle access.
The lower portion of the trail won’t require much dirt movement, but there are a couple large rootballs in the way.
Alas, administrative overhead has increased as of late, otherwise the excavator work would probably also be complete by now. Regardless, we’re getting close.
On the fence
On September 22 a few volunteers got together and made great progress on the fence that demarcates the eastern Cancourse boundary. We are scrambling to complete the eastern border controls prior to the October 6 work party, since we will be implementing soil restoration pilot projects, and ongoing motorcycle incursion would make this work pointless.
Don’t these trail runners look like a generally happy bunch? The fence line they prepped is on a steep slope, which made just walking the line more than once a serious workout.
Work party 6
As mentioned above, our sixth work party will focus on soil restoration rather than trail building/maintenance. As we build high quality low maintenance trails, we will be able to retire nearby low quality eroded trails, but we need to learn more about what works before putting lots of time into restoration. If you are interested in helping with this, please set aside 1pm-4pm on October 6 (plus roughly 20 minutes to hike to the work site). Details will solidify as the date approaches.