Project: Castle Rock State Park
Photo Album: 1802-10 Castle Rock
Photo Album: 1803-10 Castle Rock
The Trail Center once again teamed up with California State Parks in February and March, 2018. This time we helped open up a new trail between the long-time parking lot off of Highway 35—“Castle Rock Trailhead”—to the new parking lot under construction on the Sempervirens Fund property to the north. Due to very enthusiastic and large turnouts, we were also able to send some crews off on other projects near the trailhead, including trail construction and junk cleanup on the new trail being constructed between the new parking lot and Castle Rock Falls.
In February, we were joined by 2 other groups in addition to the state park trail maintenance staff: the Friends of Castle Rock and Portola and Al Lisen’s Skyline-to-the-Sea crew. All told we had around 50 people working on a trail segment that is only 0.2 mile long. With the combined groups, it allowed crews to split up to tackle different projects. Al Lisen’s group volunteered to undertake the hardest work which was removing the old—now unnecessary—barbed wire fence between the state park land and the Sempervirens property. They ended up removing several hundred feet of fence! Another group of mostly Friends of CR and P worked on a large turnpike on the connector between the old parking lot and the crossing of Hwy 35. That left the majority of the new trail to Trail Center and park staff. But, despite that, we were able to finish the new trail segment for as far as wsa allowed. In addition, we had a crew that used a grip hoist (heavy duty come-along) all day long to remove tree stumps, and two crews constructed retaining walls out of rather large fir logs. This new connector trail will officially open at the time of the opening of the new parking lot. The excellent February weather allowed for a lengthy refreshments hour afterwards.
March weather took center stage, but fortunately didn’t perform until mid-afternoon. Another large turnout—this time sans the Friends of CR and P—allowed us to make significant progress on several varied projects. Three crews—supervised by Dave Croker—worked major maintenance projects along the Castle Rock trail that had been lingering on the state park’s project list for quite sometime. The top two crews worked to replace the aging “bridges” across the headwaters of Castle Rock creek. The state park crews had gathered the materials and started the prep for the new bridges that were replacing the old. Trail Center crews worked hard all day long, and managed to nearly complete the upper bridge, while the lower bridge was finished, but the approaches were not because they required more materials than expected. The bottom crew rebuilt 3 major side drainage crossings along the trail. Each built structure ended up being large drain dips with buried, downhill rock support. The other Trail Center crews—supervised by Judd Volino—ended up in a different area to the northwest of the old parking lot. Crews spent quite a bit of time (and energy!) hauling out old telephone poles and other debris from the drainage that the new Castle Rock Falls trail will follow from the new parking lot. By lunchtime, crews were digging in the dirt constructing new tread along this new trail. An American Conservation Corps crew will complete this new trail. It will also be open after the opening of the new parking lot. A light rain came in by 2pm, but blew over in time for refreshments. Another shout out goes to Al Lisen’s crew for continuing to remove old fence. This time they came within just 150 feet of finishing. By the time you read this, the rest should be removed.
Thanks as always to all the background support from Judd to help organize the work day, Kathy for her expert coordinating, Larry for refreshments, and all the crew leaders and crew leader trainees for making sure the volunteers were taken care of and worked safely, and for ensuring expert trail was constructed.
Dave Croker
July 3, 2018