{"id":666,"date":"2010-06-25T18:14:57","date_gmt":"2010-06-26T01:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/?p=666"},"modified":"2010-06-25T18:14:57","modified_gmt":"2010-06-26T01:14:57","slug":"backbone-trail-maintenance-june-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/2010\/06\/25\/backbone-trail-maintenance-june-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Backbone Trail Maintenance June 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mark Langton\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Latigo Canyon section of the Backbone Trail just west of Newton Mtwy.<\/p><\/div>\n

Over the last couple of weeks some new maintenance has occurred on the Backbone Trail along sections at Solstice and Latigo Canyons <\/a>(National Park Service-held property). The crew that did the work is unknown at this time, but it is assumed that it was National Park Service or contracted by them. \u00a0It was very professionally done. Hand-worked tread leveling and minor widening has taken place, with a few sections being filled in with soft dirt. The depth of these short fill sections does not exceed one inch at their deepest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The trail heading east from Newton Motorway: Natural rock formations along the upper section and at the bottom as it enters the canyon bottom \u00a0have been left intact.\u00a0 Switchbacks were left intact or filled slightly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Another section of the Backbone West of Newton Mtwy. where some rock was left in the tread.<\/p><\/div>\n

The section of trail most affected is directly to the west of Newton Motorway. The tread surface of the first half-mile of this mildly rolling, somewhat technical section has been leveled and filled, and slightly widened, and three or four short rocky sections were removed, making it much less technical. Further to the west, where the trail has notoriously seen heavy erosion due to its steep pitch, it has been slightly re-routed and leveled, and several drainages have been added to assist with water runoff. This is a significant improvement for both uphill and downhill travel.\u00a0 When contacted by CORBA, Melanie Beck, an outdoor recreation planner for the National Park Service, stated that the work was considered routine and done for resource maintenance and safety concerns. At the time of this report no information was available regarding any additional trail work in the immediate future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the last 23 years I have seen this type of trail work and it is indeed not out of the ordinary, nor is it overly aggressive (of which I have also seen). In fact, the soft sections of tread surface resemble that of a just-completed new trail. Compacting will take place over the next few months with use and moisture, and hydro-erosion will begin sculpting ruts and other natural formations. Climbing the filled sections was a little more work than usual, but they should get packed down soon enough. And descending required only slightly more attention paid to washing out. I am a little disappointed that the short rocky sections were removed, but that\u2019s a personal selfishness\u2014the trail is still a blast and is one of the best and most scenic sections in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mark Langton\u00a0 Over the last couple of weeks some new maintenance has occurred on the Backbone Trail along sections at Solstice and Latigo Canyons (National Park Service-held property). The crew that did the work is unknown at this time, but it is assumed that it was National Park Service or contracted by them. \u00a0It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,17],"tags":[39,346,160],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}