Project: Sugarloaf Mountain Open Space - City of San Mateo
Photo Album: 1703 Sugarloaf Mountain - Amphitheater Trail
After four consecutive cancellations due to regional rainouts, washouts, mud slides and road disasters, the Trail Center finally launched its 2017 season at Sugarloaf Mountain in Laurelwood Park of San Mateo City. We had a day of perfect weather and 37 (!) volunteers eager to start helping to repair the damage from this winter's wonderful storms.
Thanks to the suggestion of Kathy Diamond, we were able to find a workable venue that had easy access and repairable problems, a not insignificant task considering that many trails and access roads on our list are still closed. There were three main problems on the Amphitheater Trail (which the Trail Center constructed a few years ago) that needed our attention: mucky steps at the beginning of the trail, a mucky causeway further up and a super-mucky switchback that caused serious problems in proceeding up the trail.
We were fortunate to have three experienced crew leaders to direct our volunteers. Bill Farrell was assigned step repair, Dave Croker took on the switchback challenge and Luke Lempart handled everything else in the middle. We also wish to thank Larry Stites for again dealing with our after-work refreshments, Kathy Diamond for rounding up the volunteers, Justin Knowles for helping with the survey and Dave Croker for trailer hauling.
There are very steep steps at the beginning of this trail, and continuous water seepage was making the step surfaces slippery, muddy and unsafe. Drains would be difficult to do given the terrain, so a plan was made to top off each step with two or three inches of base rock that would provide for some drainage and at least improve the traction on each step. The rock would also provide a hardening for this very heavily used staircase. Kathy arranged for a ton of base rock to be delivered, and the City came through on the request. Midway, however, we thought we would be significantly short of material required, so Bill creatively mined nearby gravel and rock to supplement the fill used. These larger rocks greatly improved the potential drainage and strength of the stairs and by the end of the day the really hard working volunteers had filled and topped each step. The resulting improvement was dramatic.
Luke's crew handled a lot of drain cleanout and refurbishing. After a winter season such as we had it becomes very obvious why good drainage is needed. Our consensus, after looking at long stretches of this trail that were in perfect condition, is that we did a pretty decent job of planning and building at the front.
The mucky causeway was fixed with some inside retaining walls to divert the seepage and all the base rock we could haul to the site to fill in the top surface. (Note: Dave C. and Kathy returned later in the week to this section to create more of a drain behind the retaining walls.)
Dave's switchback project required digging into the hill to remove a slide, repairing a lot of the tread and creating an inside ditch to divert the water.
There were some other bonus repairs we were able to complete at the end of the day, and the net result was a tremendously improved and hike-able trail for the community.
Thanks to all the volunteers that helped make this happen. It is an excellent beginning for our 2017 year.
Hank Magnuski
Trail Boss
3/13/17