Twenty-five high school mountain bike team members and fourteen USC students, along with a few parents, coaches and CORBA and SMMTC trail crew leaders, came out this past Saturday to address the ruts on the Trancas Canyon section of the Backbone Trail.
We installed or fixed about 50 drainage nicks and otherwise repaired water damage over about a mile of the trail.
But two days before, with about 40 student volunteers ready and eager to help, we were afraid that we weren’t going to be able to do restoration work on Saturday! We had planned to work on the Backbone Trail about a mile east of Kanan Road, but we learned on Thursday morning that there was going to be a major trail running event that would see 300 runners passing through our work area. This would not only interfere with our ability to get needed work done (we stop working and step aside when trail users come through the work area), but was a safety concern for the runners. After a large flurry of emails and consulting with some park agencies, we decided to move the event to Trancas Canyon.
As usual, the students threw their youthful exuberance into the tasks and quickly dug out the drainage nicks. They finished about two hours before we expected, so some moved further along the trail and installed a few more nicks, while others worked on widening and resloping.
Many thanks to the students from Simi Valley, Calabasas and El Camino Real High Schools, and from the USC Outdoors Club!
More photos of the event can be seen in our trailwork photo gallery.
