It’s not every day you get the chance to build a bike park, and the crew rose to the occasion early season for the Eagle Bike Park. Our crew leaders Sam and Bay got trained on mini excavator operations, and they honed their skills here in preparation for the rest of the season. We weathered torrential rain, some snow, then, only weeks later hot, dusty winds. The crew learned all about landscaping and deer fencing, and got to use their creativity building features for all ability levels in the skills zone of the bike park. Long OT days were made worthwhile when we got to see the youth of Eagle County flying off the lips.
Our next order of business was to build a new climbing trail from Abram’s Gulch to Abram’s Ridge (one you can actually ride up). We worked our way up from the creek in the excavator, and Bay and Sam had their first experiences operating machinery on steep hillsides.
“I wonder how long till I can operate the mini and not be in constant fear of tipping.”
These days involved lots of biking on the clock–a crew favorite–to access the worksite, expedite our commute in and to “test” the product. The Rocky Mountain Youth Corps lent us a big hand cutting trail for the Abram’s Ridge extension. Their youthful enthusiasm never waned despite sleeping in tents all summer.
The stoke was high when the new Abram’s trail hub came together, but we knew we still had plenty of work cut out for us in Eagle in the fall.
The projects in Eagle this summer have focused on connecting the current system to improved overall navigation and signage. While it seems simple enough, trail building is never “simple.” We had a lot of really exciting trail building work ahead to look forward to after our Forest Service Season.
Forest Service Season
Mid-summer is the Forest Service season. To give a brief lesson in history, most Forest Service trails were not purpose built to last. Sustainability wasn’t a huge buzzword back then. Hence, all forest trails need a LOT of maintenance. And that’s what the TCC is here for.
This season’s targets included Buck Creek, Buffehr Creek, Bowman’s Shortcut, and Turquoise Lake. Our goal on these trails is never to change them, but to maintain their character and prevent them from eroding away via drainage control systems. These measures often look like building some pretty massive rock-reinforced drains, raising and outsloping tread to shed water ASAP.
This was also the part of the season with the brunt of our hiking. For example, on Buck Creek, we started each day at 7 am hiking 3 miles (2,400’ of vert) before even swinging a tool. And the flies were punishing. On Bowman’s, the daily walk in to our worksite was 4 miles.
Sprinkled into this work, we also removed hundreds of pounds of barbed wire from Meadow Mountain, cleared hundreds of fallen trees, and had two week-long backcountry hitches (read: backpacking with tools) up Turquoise Lake. The Forest Service llamas helped us out.
Back Down To Eagle
After finishing up our Forest Service commitments, with hardly a moment to breathe, we packed up and headed back down to Eagle to begin work on our second trail hub, Cow Camp. Some new sections of trail at the top and bottom of Mike’s Night Out were slated to tie everything together into another neat hub. With the winter approaching, we had a hard deadline looming. Thankfully we were gifted with excellent weather minus the two days that we got caught in the rain and had to navigate the slipperiest conditions one can imagine in the vehicles to get out unscathed. Between the top and bottom, we built a little over a mile of new trail extending Mike’s, and making the trail a lot more fun in my completely unbiased opinion.
This season was jam packed, and extremely physical, but the crew took the challenge head on and rose to the challenge leaving me proud of both the quality and quantity of work we accomplished this season. A huge thanks goes out to our crew this year. Sam, Bay, Jack, Trey, Dave, Josh, Jeremiah, and sometimes Emily, thank you all for your dedication and hard work.
Long Live Trails!
Sammy Chipkin, Trail Crew Manager
Sammy Wants You To Support our Trail Conservation Crew:
Donate now to support our Trail Conservation Crew with:
- Crew Apparel/Uniforms: We get super dirty, wet, sweaty, you name it out there and the more funding we have for uniforms the more comfortable we are out there and ready to work for our community!
- First Aid Supplies: Many of us on the crew have certifications such as Wilderness First Aid but we definitely need to up our first-aid kits. We need two, fully stocked kits for both of our trucks with items like tourniquets, pelvic binders, etc.
- Tools: Man do we always need new tools! We give our tools a beating through the year and are constantly in need of the newest tool technology and chainsaw supplies to complete projects.
- Food & Drink: As you can imagine, digging in the dirt keeps us hungry and thirsty all day long. Food and drink supplies are greatly appreciated and keeps the moral high!
- Training: From rock work, mini excavator operation, bridge building, check-step creation, to turnpikes and mono walls…we always can learn and improve our skills through educational training opportunities.
