Tuesday's Trail Work Another Success

We had great evening of trailwork on Tuesday. This time we had a total of 10 hard working volunteers and we got an incredible amount of work done in just two hours time. We worked on a section of the Ohlone trail as it approaches Rambler trail.

As I've discussed previously, trail maintenance is about keeping the trails open and also increasing safety since cutting the brush back allows people to see farther down the trail as other walkers or riders are approaching.

Sometimes we have some people say, "I don't like it when you cut back the brush, its so much prettier and natural looking the way it is."

It is true that when we do maintenance we cut back the brush farther than it may seem is needed but there are good reasons for this.

The two biggest factors in trails becoming unstable are water damage and brush that forces people to walk or ride "below the trail."

When brush is overgrown as in the "before" pictures we take here, it's nice for a while but eventually you are forced off the trail. When this happens your footing becomes unstable and the trail becomes eroded.

The other factor to keep in mind is that with our volunteer maintenance force, we may not get a chance to come back and do maintenance on any particular section for 3-5 years. If we just lightly trimmed the brush, it would grow back to the same problem in 6 months.

As for the water damage, its not as obvious on this section because there are not ruts forming but there is a lot of soil that gets washed onto the trail from uphill. This mound that forms is not easy to walk on so people move to the downhill part of the trail and the trail becomes very narrow. Again, nice for a while but eventually the trail goes away. As you can see from the photos in this case, after we cut the brush back, we shaped the trail tread to widen it back to the original width of the trail when it was built about 6 years ago. So this should be a nice section to travel on for some years to come!

It's been great having regular days and publicity here on Patch to add to our volunteer pool. We've had several new people come out to help. People have a good time getting a lot done, it's very satisfying. Please feel free to come out and join us. We have the tools, just wear gloves, a hat, sturdy boots, long pants and sleeves and bring water. We have more dates on the schedule and you can send me an email for details at: ksullivan@belmont.gov

Weekends are 9 a.m. -1 p.m.-ish and meet at the gate at Lake and Lyall.  Tuesdays move around the park for maintenance so email me for meeting location.

Sat June 11 9am

Sat June 18 9am

Tue June 21 6pm

Tue July 5 6pm

Tue July 19 6pm