Although we didn’t have to repair humongous El Nino rain damage that we were expecting, we still had ruts to fix that had been growing for years.
Filling in the big rut in the middle of the trail and re-establishing the gentle slope so water will run off the trail, rather than down it and making a rut.
About 40 people volunteered to help work on trails today for the annual COSCA Spring Trailwork Day. We split into two groups, about 15 working on the bottom of ‘Space Mountain‘ (the singletrack section of the Los Robles Trail West) while the rest went to the ‘Lily Tomlin Trail’ which connects the East and West halves of the Los Robles Trail. Both trails had major ruts, not having had any restoration work done on them for years. The work consisted of filling in ruts, restoring the trail outslope so water would run off it rather than down it, and building drainage nicks. On Space Mountain, we restored most of the first 1500′ of trail. Naturally, if we’d had more people and time, we could have done a lot more. The soil was perfect – moist and easy to dig and pack, and there was a low cloud cover to keep the temperatures cool.
Space Mountain is CORBA’s adopted trail and we’ve worked it a number of times in the past, but then we started at the top, or half way down, and worked our way to the bottom. This is the first time we’ve started at the bottom and had enough time to properly fix the ruts.
The group working on Space Mountain consisted of 6 from CORBA, 6 from the Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council (SMMTC) Meetup hiking group, and the rest from the Weekday Trailblazers Meetup hiking group. A few other Weekday Trailblazers were working on the Lily Tomlin Trail along with a number of SMMTC and other community volunteers.
After about 3 1/2 hours, we all headed back to the parking area where Rangers were preparing a barbecue lunch for the volunteers. Ranger burgers, hot dogs, chili and vegi-burgers always taste great! Chatting over our food, it was clear that everybody was happy with and proud of the work they’d accomplished to improve the trails for everyone. CORBA and the COSCA Rangers thank everyone for coming out to help and really appreciate their effort!
You can see more photos in our 2016 COSCA Spring Trailwork photo gallery.
Time for lunch!
