Hello Friends,
We hope 2023 is off to a good start for you and that you’ve enjoyed the great outdoors
this winter. It’s time for another Friends of the Peak newsletter highlighting what we did in 2022.
At the beginning of 2022, we added three new board members, Vickie Laughlin, Russell Iverson, and Steve Driska. Brian Van Valkenburg scheduled an entire season of work for 2022. In addition to our usual projects, our friends from the Pikes Peak Group of the Colorado Mountain Club, led by Tom Mowle, asked us to partner with them to re-route a segment of the trail to Horsethief Park. This was to prevent the closure of the trail by the Forest Service because of a land dispute; a recent survey showed the trail crossed private property. You probably heard about this land dispute because it was well publicized in the media. This trail starts at Highway 67 and allows access to many popular destinations, including Horsethief Falls, Pancake Rocks, and Sentinel Point. This became a high-priority project for us.
Before the 2022 season even started, board members were doing scout hikes on trails where we planned work, specifically on the North Catamount section of the Ring the Peak Trail and of course, on Barr trail. Our volunteers were also helping plan the Horsethief Park re-route project.
We started the season on a hot and dry Thursday in mid-May doing tread and drain work on Barr trail as multiple grass fires broke out in the city below. Nine days later, our first scheduled Post and Rail workday on Barr had to be canceled by a foot of snow on the trail. Colorado weather- you gotta love it!
In early June, we worked on the Catamount segment of the Ring the Peak trail. This beautiful trail continues the dirt road along the north shore of North Catamount Reservoir towards Raspberry Mountain and the Mennonite camp off Highway 67. We worked on about a mile of trail that hadn’t been touched for several years but was still in good shape. At its western end, we removed many small evergreens and shrubs taking over the trail. Further east (picture), we relocated about 100’ of trail upslope a few yards to avoid a deep eroded incision in the road caused by water draining to the adjacent North Catamount Creek.
June 21 was Pikes Peak United Way’s Day of Action. A great crew of community volunteers from United Way joined us to work on the Seven Bridges Trail. Thank you to these amazing volunteers who gave their time and energy moving rocks, hauling timbers, and digging in the dirt.
Saturday and Sunday, June 18 and 19, were the first two days of the Horsethief Park trail reroute with the Colorado Mountain Club. The new trail was about 550’ long, requiring extensive removal of small trees in the tread and a significant amount of rock wall construction. The trail had been staked and flagged, and sawyers had previously cut trees in the tread, leaving about three feet of trunk to use as leverage as we dug out the roots. About 45 volunteers worked on the first day and 25 on the second.
How the trail looked when we finished up on the first day
Here’s Dan working on the rock wall and ramp to connect the new trail to the old trail uphill from
the segment on private property.
And yes, all those rocks Dan is standing on were installed that weekend. After that first weekend of work, the forest service was satisfied that the trail was a functional reroute. This meant that they would not have close the old trail. Success! But both FotP and CMC have very high standards, so several volunteers from both organizations returned later to do finishing touches on the trail.
Back to Barr Trail:
We knew from our scout hikes that extensive work was needed on the fences along Barr trail. We had four workdays repairing fences on Barr Trail (“post and rail days”). As anyone who has hiked on Barr trail knows, trying to repair the fences is a never-ending task. Most problems are caused by age, weather, and falling trees, but some are caused by hikers taking shortcuts through or over the fences.
Here’s a “before” picture of fence damage at the end of winter, above switchback 10, about a
mile up from the trailhead. A tree had fallen on the rails to the left, breaking them and splitting
the post. Surprisingly, the post was still usable. As shown in the following picture, we replaced the two broken rails in July.
Our final Post & Rail Day on Barr was in August. These volunteers worked through a light rain on a
pleasantly cool and foggy day. Despite the weather, they’re all smiling.
This year we also spent a few days on the Saint Mary’s Falls and Seven Bridges trails, two of our favorites. On one of our work days on the Seven Bridges trail, we worked to protect the trail from further erosion towards the creek.
Brian, Mike, Dan, and Denise are setting stones in one of two drains we greatly expanded and armored to better handle water draining across the trail from the steep hillside on the right.
This year the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon moved to a new weekend later in the year. This meant our three traditional workdays to remove slip and trip hazards just before race weekend was held in September. On the first day, we started from the trailhead and worked on the bottom of the trail, ending at switchback 18 (the “corral” in trail worker slang, about 1.75 miles from the trailhead). Our relationship with PPAM is excellent; the organizers (and racers) appreciate our efforts to make the course safer. In return, on two of the workdays, PPAM gave us a ride up Longs Ranch Road with marathon staff who were hauling water tanks up for the aid stations. (Anytime you can get a ride and not have to carry tools up 2,000’ vertical feet, it’s a real treat!) This allowed us to start work at No Name Creek near milepost 3.0 and work uphill to milepost 3.5 and then down to the junction with the Incline return trail (near milepost 2.5) on one of the days. We finished tuning up the trail from the Incline return trail down to switchback 18 on the final workday.
Some of our friends from the AdAmAn club joined us on a cool and rainy Saturday for this work, and on the following Thursday, a group of volunteers from Cisco joined us. Both groups were great and fun to get to know and work with.
Our AdAmAn friends at PPAM headquarters before they got wet.
Breaking up into work teams and dividing the tools at No Name Creek. The rain didn’t hamper our work, and many of us enjoyed seeing these familiar places in different weather. (At least I did.) Our volunteers from Cisco had nicer weather the following Thursday.
Here are some of the Cisco folks and some of our “usual suspects” at the tool talk.
Besides removing slip and trip hazards, we cut back scrub oak and mountain mahogany encroaching on the trail (i.e., corridor clearing). Whenever possible, we cleaned out drains.
Here are two of the Cisco volunteers rejuvenating an existing drain near milepost 2.0:
Finally, we had something new:
The Second Annual Pikes Peak Bigfoot Hunt to benefit Friends of the Peak! Russ Iverson organized, publicized (even appearing on local TV!), and starred in this production as Bigfoot himself. The hunt was on the Mt. Esther/Crowe Gulch trail along the Pikes Peak Highway on a beautiful Saturday in late September. Those who bought tickets to be Bigfoot hunters and successfully found him were eligible for neat outdoor gifts.
Here are some happy prize winners getting their gifts from Russ at the night’s after-party. Like Clark Kent and Superman, you never see Russ and Bigfoot together.
So, to summarize, it was great to be back outside again, working on the trails we all love! The next newsletter will cover the end-of-season banquet, our post-season trail work on Barr, our involvement with the Manitou High School project, and pictures of our annual tool cleaning (Spoiler Alert: sparks will be flying).
