The Trail Companion

Winter 2001

Trail Center Notes

Trail Construction and Maintenance

...continued.

When we rerouted major portions of Mapache Trail, the creek was a long way away from the trail, but an amazing amount of

The new retaining wall on Mapache Trail.

Photo by Geoffrey Skinner

silt has come down the canyon since 1996 and water covered a stretch of trail during last year's floods. To address this problem, the trail raising crew built a 30-foot long, 15" high retaining wall and moved a couple of tons of gravel and sand. Fortunately, the quarry was only a few feet away in the streambed. The big crew made rotations easy, but it was still a big job and we were glad to dump the final wheelbarrow load.
The maintenance crew reported the rest of Mapache Trail looked good after they cleared brush and fixed various tread problems. The bridges still stand and are still well above the streambeds.
Community Impact provided lunch for everyone and throughout the day, Preserve Director Philippe Cohen treated everyone to tours of the Jasper Ridge Global Climate Change project.

Thank you, Jasper Ridge volunteers! Ed Alderman, Rich Allsop, Sioux Ammerman, Stacey Baba, Nicholas Chen, Paul Childs, Patrick Chye, Teodoro Cipresso, Karyn Cipresso, Dave Croker, Max Dangerfield, Steve Dill, Doug Dull, Alex Fabrikant, Patty Ferrari, Scott Heeschen, Alan Hshieh, Francis Hsu, Jennifer Hsu, Marilyn Hyde, Jan Johnson, Peter Johnson, Mehboob Kadri, Ken Koll, Matt Koll, James Liu, Josh Martin, Tracy Moore, Nelson Oliver, Pat Oren, Marissa Pagsishan, Jeanie Phan, Darwin Poulos, Rob Rocha, Aaron Schuman, Cynthia Marshall Schuman, Terry Simpson, Geoffrey Skinner, Roger Tan, George Taylor, Katherine Thomas, Julie Tindall, Chun Tse, Jim Vokac, Greg Werner, Pat Wiggins, Jennifer Williams, Byron Yu.

Hakone Gardens

Roughly 25 energetic trailbuilders met in the morning at Hakone Gardens in Saratoga to give the Hakone Wilderness Trail some tender loving care. We had built the trail roughly seven years ago, and most of it was holding up very well.

Solving the Culvert Problem

Photo by Geoffrey Skinner

A large culvert uphill of the trail was obviously dumping tons of water onto the trail in heavy rains. While we were originally constructing the trail, the culvert had been inactive. Now it was very active. We scrounged the hillside for rocks to construct a rock culvert to allow water to drain underneath the trail. Scavenging the hillside for rocks and coming up with the plan occupied an entire crew for the day. Other crews installed draindips and brushed out other sections of the trail that had become overgrown. We finished all the work we had set out to do just as we were running out of energy - perfect timing!

Thank you, Hakone volunteers! Matt Bandura, Steve Bell, Bill Brune, Eric Brune, Sierra Brune, Danae Clark, Peter Corsius, David Croker, Tracy Eastvold, Joy Eduaorte, Brinnger Galimba, Scott Heeschen, Mike Ivanov, Justin Knowles, Lucas Morton, Kim Ninh, Jeannie Pha, Darwin Poulos, Cathy Sewell, Geoffrey Skinner, Doug Sonoit, Katherine Thomas, Julie Tindall, David Ulrich, Nick Wall.

Volunteer Appreciation, Tool Party and Annual Meeting

A group of mostly Crew Leaders and Trainees ably sharpened, repaired and cleaned tools, and spiffed up the tool trailer on November 5th. Without the punishment of Castle Rock or similar projects, most of our tools were in better shape than usual, with some notable exceptions. We followed the Tool Party with some Volunteer Appreciation pizza, other goodies and thank-you's all around. At the Annual Meeting, after a suspenseful election, members unanimously approved Geoffrey for another term on the Board and he made a brief address on the State of the Trail Center. Finally, we relaxed with a dazzling show of wildflower and landscape photography by Dave Croker, Alan Justice and Darwin Poulous.

Thank you, Tool Party volunteers! Rich Allsop, Dave Croker, Scott Heeschen, Bill Henzel, Alan Justice, Tim Oren, Pat Oren, Darwin Poulos, Alan Ross, Geoffrey Skinner, Julie Tindall.

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