By Kinsey Warnock, CDTC Field Crew Leader
Time flies by when you are running around in the mountains! Let me take you back to summer, in June and July, when we worked on Colorado trail projects.
Trail Adopter Training
The Colorado Field Season began with the Colorado Adopter Training at Wolf Creek Pass in early June! CDTC Field Technical Specialist Michael McDaniel and I headed up and brought CDTC’s brand new tool trailer! This trailer was funded by a Colorado Parks and Wildlife grant, and Michael spent some of his shoulder season time building shelves and tool racks to make it functional.
The night before the adopter training, we joined CDTC Colorado Regional Rep Jordan Williams in South Fork to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of South Fork becoming a Gateway Community. Jordan hosted trivia, and it was fun to see familiar faces and meet some new people as well. We had a great night, and the trivia was entertaining (and educational)!
On Saturday morning, we drove up to Wolf Creek Pass and hosted the adopter training with support from the San Juan National Forest’s Pagosa Ranger District. We had a range of volunteer experience levels, but everyone was eager to learn. We worked north from the pass, focusing on improving drainage and clearing the [trail] corridor. The seven newly trained CDT Adopters put in sixteen drains and cleared about one mile of corridor!
CO AT crew up at Wolf Creek Pass. Photo by Jordan Williams
Highlights
CDTC also collaborated with Headwaters Trails Alliance (HTA) to complete some work in Grand County on the Arapaho National Forest within the Sulphur Ranger District.
The first project was routine maintenance on the Monarch Lake trail. We had a great turnout for this project with over 20 people across three days, and it was fun to catch up with some repeat volunteers. We maintained about 6 miles of trail, focusing on drains (154) and closing 1,130 feet of social trails. This trail is very popular, and we experienced a flood of visitors while working there over a sunny July weekend.
But the highlight was our crew chef (and trail adopter), Tim. He knocked it out of the park when he pulled out a pizza oven and made twenty-two individual pizzas! They were delicious and well worth the wait.
Never Summer
The second project with HTA was up at Bowen Gulch in the Never Summer Wilderness just west of Rocky Mountain National Park. This backcountry project involved a much smaller but hearty crew, and we replaced a failing puncheon with a turnpike.
This involved ripping out the old structure and then building an entirely new one with locally sourced materials (timber, rocks, and dirt). We also installed three drain pipes under the structure for drainage. In addition to this twenty-two-foot turnpike, we maintained 77 drains along the trail.
We managed to avoid most of the rain, but the mosquitoes were awful. It was a great weekend regardless!
Left: The barrow pit we dug for material – engineered by two engineers. Below: The crew on the finished turnpike. Photo by Sean Burke.
Women’s Wilderness
July took us back to Herman Gulch on the Clear Creek Ranger District, where we partnered with Women’s Wilderness, a non-profit based out of Boulder that helps girls, women, and non-binary folk find their place in the outdoors. We were able to get three of the four sils (the logs that the bridge will sit on) leveled and in place by the end of the weekend.
Field Program Manager Haley Gamertsfelder and I led this project, and we had a great weekend filled with deep conversations, good weather, and glitter (biodegradable, of course)!
Wrapping Up
Since the project wasn’t quite finished, several CDTC staff and the folks from the Clear Creek County trail crew spent a few more days wrapping up the bridge. We were able to prep and install the stringers (the part of the bridge that you walk on) and set a giant stone step to fix the height difference between the tail and the bridge. This project was tiring and logistically complicated, but we managed to get the entire bog bridge completed by the end of the hitch. We couldn’t have done it without the volunteer pack in crew, Women’s Wilderness, Clear Creek County Trail Crew, and the Front Range Backcountry Horsemen!
Lastly, a huge thank you for the constant support of our land manager partners at the Forest Service across Colorado. We couldn’t do this work without you. It really does take a village to get this work done.
Get Involved
Contact us for more information about volunteer trail projects or other ways to get involved with the work to compelte, protect, and elevate the Continental Divide Trail.