Join CORBA, SMMTC, COSCA and other volunteer groups to work on the Conejo Open Space trails in Thousand Oaks.

This year we’ll continue our work that we started in October to reroute the ridgeline Peninsula Trail in the Western Plateau / Conejo Canyons to a line that is more fun to ride and scenic.

There will be a thank you lunch and prize drawings at noon after the work. This is a great event with lots of like-minded folks to help out. If you use the trails in Thousand Oaks, come out and help build and maintain them! No prior experience is necessary and all volunteers work at their own pace, taking plenty of time to rest and chat with other trail enthusiasts!

This annual Conejo Valley event always helps to put some very sweet trails into good shape. Be sure to stay afterwards for the free lunch and raffle.

Details are available on our 2017 COSCA Annual Trailwork Day event on Meetup.com. While there, register online to show your support!

Things to bring:

• work gloves
• long pants and long sleeved shirt
• water, snack
• sunglasses and sunblock

Tools and instructions on how to use them safely will be provided. There will be a free thank-you lunch and prize give-away afterwards from noon until 2:00 pm.

Of the 120 volunteers expected for the annual event held in Thousand Oaks, about 60 were put into seven crews that worked on building a bypass to the very steep bottom of the Peninsula Trail in the Western Plateau/Conejo Canyons area. The other half were assigned to six crews to work on two other trails leading down to the canyon, but some distance from the Peninsula Trail.

The CORBA crew and other mountain bikers worked on the Peninsula Trail, so only our experience will be described here.

The event began at 7:30 when volunteers started to arrive for registration and to get their goodies bag. The chaotic process of gathering into crews of about 10 each worked itself out, as it always does, and the crews with their leaders hiked down about a mile to the trailhead where we grabbed tools from the COSCA Ranger truck that was parked there. After the safety talk, the crews hiked to their work areas along the new trail that had already been cleared of chaparral.

The project was to build a new, much less steep trail that would replace the bottom section of the Peninsula Trail. It was to be about 0.35 miles long. Most of the new trail crossed a fairly steep slope, and some sections of the cross slope were very steep. That meant that we had to dig a lot of dirt out to make a trail! Overall, we must have moved several tons of dirt, but fortunately we didn’t have to move most of it more than a few feet.

We returned our tools to the Ranger truck and headed back to the meeting area in time to get to the barbecue by about noon. The COSCA Rangers cook up a great meal of ‘burgers, ‘dogs, chili and vegi-burgers, with all the accoutrements, for the Annual event held every October and the Spring event in March.

The prize give-away started as folks were finishing off their lunch; most of the prizes were books on local trails, but there was a grand prize of a mountain bike donated by Giant Bikes and a local bike shop.

You can see more photos of the work and lunch in our photo gallery of the trailwork.

Thanks to all the mountain bikers and others who came out to build this new trail! The slight rain overnight afterwards no doubt helped to firm up the new trail. I can’t wait to get out and ride it!

This is how our section of the trail looked when we were done. Quite a change!

Here’s a time lapse of the Newbury Park High School Mountain bike team working on a section of the trail:

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!