Adopt-A-Trail Reports

August Holcomb Creek Workday

    By Ryan – Our Trail Maintenance day on the Holcomb Creek trail began with our safety meeting at the Valero gas station. Kurt, Chuck and Alicia, along with AAT leaders Ryan and Cathy traveled to the west entrance to the Holcomb Creek trail through Green Valley. Upon arrival, we found the fence/gate to the west entrance down. Further inspection showed that the gate/fence was obviously/intentionally cut to gain unauthroized access to the trail. All AAT trail crew members worked on re-building/re-establishing the fence to block access. It took us about 45 minutes to rebuild and pound stakes back into the ground to accomplish this task.

    Our AAT crew continued to the entrance to the Lower Larga trail to give us access to Holcomb Creek. Once on Holcomb Creek our crew proceeded to the current work project on the Rock Garden.

    At the rock garden, everyone began working to move rocks into the rock garden area. Kurt, Chuck, and Ryan winched, lifed and rolled the rocks into place adding about 8′-12′ off addition rock to the rock garden currently in place. The weather was fairly nice so we worked until about 5pm, then headed out through Lower Larga trail.

    Upon departing through the Lower Larga trail, Chuck suffered a major mechanical breakdown. The knuckle on his jeep’s front axle where his steering linkage connects broke leaving him with no steering. With a little teamwork and a collaborated effort of ingenuity and creativity, Kurt, Alicia, Cathy and Ryan managed to get Chuck some of his jeep’s steering back and get him to Fawnskin without having to leave his jeep on the trail. Way to go MJR family!

    Aside from the mechancial issues here is what we observed:

    -Illegal access from west entrance
    -Creek is growing in nicely (green)
    -Rained on the trail 2 weeks prior, but still dusty
    -Rock garden coming along nicely

    Things to do on next AAT day:

    -Add some more rocks to the rock garden, continuing it westward about 12 more feet.
    -Re-wire the west end fence/gate and pound in stakes with post pounder