In places, the Two Foxes Trail is almost completely closed off by overgrowing brush.
The turnout this year for the 2019 Santa Monica Mountains Trail Days was probably the largest ever! The event was hosted by the Santa Monica Mountains Trails Council (SMMTC). Volunteers came from that organization, CORBA, the Sierra Club, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, high schools, various Meetup groups, and more! There were tents scattered all over the campground on Friday and Saturday night as people took advantage of the free camping and meals to go with their volunteer work.
There were about 170 volunteers on Saturday. The vast majority went to fix up the Blue Canyon Trail that had been hit hard by rainstorms and overgrowing brush. In some places you couldn’t even tell where the trail had been. The workers made quick work of restoring the 0.8-mile-long trail and were back at the campground well before 2:30.
CORBA president Steve Messer uses a hedge trimmer to make quick work of the overgrowing brush on the Two Foxes Trail.
The 7 members of the CORBA crew headed to the very overgrown Two Foxes Trail, a favorite of mountain bikers. The two crew leaders wielded gas-powered hedge trimmers to quickly cut down the overgrowth while the rest picked up the clippings and moved them off the trail. We got about 2/3 of the 1.25-mile-long trail cleared on Saturday. On Sunday we returned to the section we missed, this time with 6 volunteers and only one hedge trimmer, and cleared out the remainder of the trail. Now you don’t have to worry about ducking the brush and you can see much further to tell if you’re going to overtake or meet someone coming the other way, and the trail is much more fun and safer for it! We got back to the campground just about the expected time of noon.
On Sunday, there were 70 volunteers, more than double the usual number! The non-CORBA group all when to fix up the Upper Sycamore Canyon Trail.
All crew leaders reported that everyone did a great job, especially the high school kids and the scouting groups. Thanks to everyone for their fantastic support of our trails!
You can view more photos of the volunteers at our 2019 SMM Trail Days photo gallery.
The Saturday barbecue dinner.
The primary focus of the work was to move the trail slightly uphill, further from the flood plane where it had been buried by mudflows. Because of all the rain, the soil was quite soft and quite easy to dig out and pack down. This made the work easier than normal, but still there was a lot of dirt to move where the cross-slope was quite steep, and there was one section of about 20 feet that was covered by large rocks that had to be moved.
We use the Conejo Open Space trails regularly, so this is our chance to give back to the community while expanding our trail opportunities!
