The Trail Companion

Winter 2000

Trail Center Notes

Mapping

The Map Committee worked on final touches for the updated Peninsula Parklands map (due in February from Wilderness Press) and the new Trail Map of the Central Peninsula (due in May, also from WP). The new trail map is a companion to the Trail Map of the Southern Peninsula and covers the Woodside and Half Moon Bay USGS quadrangles. The CP map will detail trails in half a dozen major county parks and preserves, including Huddart and Wunderlich County Parks and El Corte de Madera Creek and Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserves.
Our partnership with Wilderness Press, finalized in early fall 1999 (see the Fall 1999 issue of the Trail Companion), is already generating new orders for Trail Center maps. We are happy to be featured on the cover of their Spring/Summer 2000 catalog (available upon request at 1-800-443-7227)

Trail Construction and Maintenance

Castle Rock State Park, Oct. 23, Dec. 4 and Jan. 8
Trail Center volunteers continued to concentrate on the Castle Rock Trail reroute project in Castle Rock State Park this fall. We are nearing completion of this 0.7-mile project and expect to fully open the new trail in February. We were blessed with great weather and nice dirt for all days (and virtually no poison oak!).

Alan Justice and some clean, sharp tools at the Tool Party

Photo by Pat Oren

Despite predictions to the contrary, we built still more rock walls, bringing the total for this project into the hundreds of feet-far more than for any previous project. By all measures, the last trail build of century on Dec. 4th was a rousing success with over 200 feet of trail built despite small numbers, a late start and an early knock-off time. Bob Kelly brought out a chain saw on Jan. 8th to clean up some fallen trees on the route and remove a few larger limbs. Despite the heavy tree cover and rugged terrain, we cut only one tree over two inches in diameter over the entire route (and even the larger tree was actually a second trunk).

Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve (Stanford University), Nov. 14
We returned to Jasper Ridge to move a portion of the Mapache Trail out of Corte Madera Creek. When we completed work on the trail in 1996, the creek channel was about 150 feet away, but El Nino storms brought down so much silt that the stream shifted and eroded part of the trail. Although we could have built a small bridge, we were concerned about future erosion, so we relocated about 100 feet of trail uphill, crossing a narrow gully created by mineral exploration around the turn of the last century. We estimated that we moved over a ton of earth in the gully crossing alone. Unfortunately, we also exposed a number of poison oak roots and several volunteers came into contact with them. Nonetheless, the project was a success and we look forward to further work in the preserve in the coming year.

Tool Party and Annual Meeting, Nov. 21

We outdid ourselves at the Last Tool Party of the Millennium (well, Last Tool Party of the Next to Final Year of the Millennium if you want to be technical about it...) with the fastest tool cleanup and repair on record.

Improvements to the tool trailer and improved tools (left to right: Bill Henzel, Darwin Poulos, Cathy Sewell, Frank Rowand, Dave Croker)

Photo by Pat Oren

With the tools out of the way, we tackled a long-needed remodel of the Trail Center tool trailer with the instillation of new shelves to keep tools and supplies in place and easy to access. We followed the Tool Party with pizza dinner and a short Annual Meeting. Scott Heeschen and Tim Oren were reelected to the Board of Directors in landslide votes and Dave Croker was the top write-in candidate. We celebrated with a great slide show by Darwin Poulos (Alaska and France) and Dave Croker (Trail Center projects, the Sierra Nevada and the Mojave Desert).

Board of Directors

Following Dave Croker's nomination, the Board was pleased to welcome him to officially join as the newest member of the Board. At the January meeting, Geoffrey was chosen as the new President; Tim, as the new Treasurer, and Scott retained his position as Secretary.