Trail Volunteering/Trail Crew Leader Training 3/14/09

Dear Trail User,

Spring is coming up quick and so is the brush all around our trails. We are going to be sending the Front Country Trail Crew out to do cleanups very soon and would like you to be part it. Trail maintenance begins with the small stuff like clearing brush, cleaning out water bars, and repairing small damaged areas so that they do not become big repairs later. As simple as those tasks seem they have been difficult to accomplish over the years due to lack of groups doing trail work and organization of those doing it. Overgrown trails, aside from not being very fun to use, effect where a person uses a trail and can push people to use the outside edge, breaking it down and thereby narrowing the trail. The opposite is also possible, moving away from the edge and widening the trail to avoid brush. Water bars slow the erosion that water causes and direct water to exit the trail where it will not erode the trail prematurely. Other small fixes like preventing switchback cutting also helps prevent premature narrowing of the trails. These three steps are simple to do yet until now they have not been done adequately on our trails system. What is needed to help maintain our trails are people willing to work and lead work crews in efforts to battle the natural elements.

Saturday the 14th of March, the City, County, and USFS are sponsoring a "Trail Crew Leader Training" event to get people ready to lead trail clean ups. This event is free and will last from approximately 9am until 1pm at Stevens Park. We plan on attending and following this event will be sending out the Front Country Trail Crew many times over the next few months to help maintain the trails.

Is this event for you? If you plan on leading a crew to do work or individually plan on going out and doing work then the answer is YES. If at some point in the future you are going to attend trail maintenance project but not lead, you do not need to attend this event. If you know of anyone who might be interested please forward this to them. Interested parties need to get back to us by March 1st as we need to submit names to the agencies. More info about this event will be posted on our website.