Our 2023 fieldwork season was scheduled to start on Thursday May 11. A group of Walmart managers were attending a meeting in the area and had volunteered to help us on Barr trail. They were registered, parking was arranged, and we looked to be off to a great start.
But there was lightning, thunder and over 3” of rain on this date. and Brian had to cancel the workday because of safety issues. It was the right call, and that was confirmed when we learned about the tumbling boulders. On our May 20 workday we assessed the damage.
In the picture above, Brian is standing next to largest of the boulders so you can get a sense of its size. It tumbled down the hillside, demolishing fences on three segments of the trail, and came to rest in the middle of the trail below switchback 9 (at 38° 51′ 18.438″ N, 104° 56′ 21.228″ W, which is about 0.9 miles up from the trailhead)
We sawed through the crushed and mangled tree trunk, removed it, and made a smooth and level path around the boulder on the uphill side. The path is narrow but passable.
Further up the trail, Susan and Brian survey the damage to the fence on the trail segment directly above the boulder
And the segment above this took a beating too. The picture above is above switchback 10 at milepost 1.0. Some of these rails (the lighter colored ones) were just replaced in 2022
The map below shows what happened. The boulder moved 243′ vertically and 390′ horizontally. The stars show where it broke through the fencing, and the yellow boxes mark the switchback numbering system we use, starting from the trailhead.
So…… in addition to the usual maintenance work on Barr trail, we’ve had a lot more to do.
Stay tuned and we’ll update you on the progress we’ve made so far. Better yet, come see it for yourself- sign up for our Barr trail post and rail workdays at https://friendsofthepeak.org/sign-up/
