City budgeted money for trails goes to work!

The next two months are going to be an exciting time for people who care about trails around Salida. The City has made helping Salida Mountain Trails with the execution of our plan for a trail system across the river from town a priority. They have acquired a Bobcat 418 mini-excavator and made it available for our use to build trail. Yesterday, we took it out on its inaugural work day. No foolin’.

Andrew Mesesan at the controls, damn the weather and full speed ahead.

The weather was not ideal for working outside, but the time had come to break in the machine, and we had just the project in mind.

The trail that starts near the gate on Spiral Drive is called Lil’ Rattler. It starts at the gate on Spiral Drive and goes to the backside of Tenderfoot where it meets Spiral Drive again. When finished it will go back to the other trail we’ve been working on, The Backbone.

The completion of the Lil’ Rattler link to The Backbone is what we started on Wednesday with the machine. When we are done with Lil’ Rattler you will be able to walk or ride your bike from the parking lot at the gate to The Backbone, then down the Backbone to Sand Dunes Trail. Or you will be able to loop back to the parking lot using the Tenderfoot Trail.

To see details of the plan for the Arkansas Hills Trail System, go to http://salidamountaintrails.org/SMTplan.html

The machine that we broke in today is not the only contribution that the City is making to our efforts. A full time crew from the Southwest Conservation Corps has been hired for 6 weeks to build trail by hand. They got started this week.

The full-time crew from the Southwest Conservation Corps working through the snow squall.

Right now the SCC crew are finishing up the section of The Backbone that stretches from 173 to Sand Dunes. Soon they will start building a new section of the Backbone that will continue from where the current one connects to Sand Dunes Trail. This new link will go to Cottonwood Gulch. We estimate that the link to Cottonwood will be comple near the end of April. When they finish that project, the SCC crew will help us with another project that we think people will be really pleased to see.

Thank you City of Salida. We appreciate the assistance, and we plan to make the very most of it that we possibly can. In the next two months, we’ll be raising lots of dust. 

Want to help? We can really use it now. There’s been great turnout at our volunteer days. The next big “Shindig” will be Saturday, April 11. We really look forward to those big days and having a BBQ at the end with our friends. But for the next two months, please be aware that we need help whenever you can give it to us. When the machine works, it really helps if there are people on the ground nearby to help move things the machine can’t move and to polish the trail that the machine is building. And on the Saturdays that are not big volunteer “Shindigs”, we can get lots more done if we get more people out there. And if Saturdays don’t work for you, keep in mind that every Monday through Thursday the professional crew will be working. They welcome having volunteers join in. The more tools in the dirt, the more gets done that day.

Salida Mountain Trails wants to thank the City by really getting things done. If you want to thank the City, and if you want to see more trail get built fast, come on out and help. You can also help by becoming a Salida Mountain Trails member (http://salidamountaintrails.org/membership.html), or making a tax-deductable donation to Salida Mountain Trails.