Year to Date Volunteer hours
TAOSF=Trails Alliance of Santa Fe, SFFTS= Santa Fe Fat Tire Society, BMX/FR/MX = BMX, Freeride, and Motocross, SFCT = Santa Fe Conservation Trust, USFS = Santa Fe National Forest, GBP = Galisteo Basin Preserve (click here to summaries of the data in pie charts)
A big thanks to everybody that volunteered last year!
2020 Volunteer Hours – 2187 hours
We’re the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe — a volunteer arm of the Santa Fe Conservation Trust working in cooperation with public land managers to help plan, build, and maintain non-motorized trails in the Santa Fe area.
- Trail Work and Pandemic News 11/17/20
Even during the pandemic Santa Fe’s trails are undergoing care. Tim Roger’s (tim@sfct.org) work crews are limited to five but continue to improve trails in La Tierra, Dale Ball, Sun Mountain and Atalaya. Please let him know if you’d like to work alongside of knowledgeable volunteers who know how to build sustainable trails that don’t wash away at the first rain gusher (long lost though they might be).
New trail builds haven’t stopped either. The Chili Line Trail in La Tierra will add a history lesson about Santa Fe’s railroad era. New trails are being planned in the Galisteo Basin. A new neighborhood trail along Camino de los Montoyas offers a safe route by a road which has no shoulder for walkers or bikes.
The pandemic is not going away so all of us need to do an even better job at social distancing and wearing a mask. Avoiding packed parking lots at trailheads is one technique for finding trails less traveled. Always wear a mask because you never know who will appear around the next bend. If possible step off the trail to let someone else pass no closer than six feet.
Margaret Alexander
รางวัลสะสม : 7942173
รหัสผู้ใช้ : 6419106
20weeks6days5hours25min9sec - Trails During the Pandemic
Most of us have seen an uptick in trail use during the pandemic shutdown. Parking lots are full to over-flowing. We have lots of trails to spread out on and folks are used to moving off the trail as they meet others. Please try to go to trails and parks which don’t receive as many visitors.
A photo of the Rio en Medio “trail head,” such that it is, was posted on FaceBook, jammed with cars with neighbors horrified by the trash and illegal parking. The U.S. Forest Service is considering shutting down the parking area as described in this press release: Rio en Medio
The Trails Alliance of Santa Fe usually sends out crews of volunteers to work on our trails during the summer. To adhere to our governor’s guidelines for the pandemic, our crews have been limited to five people. Our usual first-Monday-of-the-month lunch meetings at Il Vicino in Santa Fe have been suspended. Until meetings can resume, our calendar of activities, including work days, will look very bare.
If you’d like to help out during the pandemic, please consider make a donation. You’ll find an easy to use donate button at the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe website.
- The Santa Fe Ultra Needs Volunteers
Hello trail lovers, on Saturday August 31 people will be coming from all over the country and even 5 Tarahumara runners from Copper Canyon in Mexico to run the Endurance Santa Fe Mountain Trail Races.
We need a few more people to help out. There are volunteer positions at aid stations, helping runners get food and water, on the course as sweepers, following the last runners and picking up the course marking flagging and other jobs.
If you would like to be a part of this fun time please contact Peter Olson at peter.olson.runs@gmail.com. By the way, Peter is a big supporter of trails being a certified trail crew leader, sawyer and steward of La Piedra trail. He works to keep our trails in good shape and usable!
- Another Resource for Finding Trail Conditions
Every hiker has set out on a trail only to discover that conditions were other than expected, even if the hiker was familiar with the trail from past visits or from consulting a hiking guide. Access roads, trailheads, creek crossing, trail regulations, and the trails themselves are always changing. To help hikers avoid surprises and prepare for their outings, the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe has created an online message board where hikers can share current information about trail conditions (information too timely for a guidebook). About closures, washouts, snow, mud, missing signs, damaged bridges, navigational challenges, difficult crossings, access road problems, etc. – whatever hikers believe other hikers would want to know before setting out on the trail. The message board is a shared and open resource. Anyone can check the board before a hike. Anyone can contribute new or updated information after a hike. At present, the message board covers all sixty-eight trails in the Sierra Club’s Day Hikes in the Santa Fe Area (Eighth Edition). The board is accessible from any computer or smartphone at santafetrails.boardhost.com.
Here’s a link to a poster we hope to put at a lot of trailheads. Trail condition Poster
Nick Knorr
- Disappearing Dirt
On the La Tierra Trails, mitigating chronic erosion has been an evolutionary process. Dirt grade reversals (i.e. building up dirt berms across a trail to divert water) have not held up. They disappear after just one season. Lately we’ve experimented with laying a foundation of modest-sized boulders to insure that the berm holds up over time. In some cases the dirt “ramp” leading up to the rocks has not stayed in place or was built too short. We’re learning and modifying the work we do.
A new grade reversal means that mountain bikers at speed need to take extra care on sections of the trails where there are severe ruts and gullies.
Here’s a link to what volunteers did at La Tierra this April – La Tierra April Work Days
Please let us know if you come upon trail problems. There’s a place to report on this page.
Getting involved with trail maintenance is a good way to understand changes that happen to your favorite trail. Trails Alliance members are trained to analyze trail problems and come up with sustainable solutions. If you want to get involved contact tim@sfct.org and check the calendar on this website for our next work day.
Margaret Alexander
- 1000 hours – Thanks Mizzou Students and Mentors!!