Crossing into the Shadow Canyon closure.
“It’s better to give than receive”, sometimes the age old clichés hit the nail on the head. In an attempt to keep myself from running too hard and too long his weekend I signed up with several other Boulder folks to head into Shadow Canyon for a day of trail work in the Flagstaff fire burn zone. After a quick tutorial we hopped in the trucks and drove right up to the base of Shadow Canyon, where we donned hard hats, shouldered various tools and began our long trek up to the saddle 1500ft above. Most of the trail is in very good shape, not being affected by the fire, but as we neared the saddle we could see some of the damage the combination of fire and erosion had caused.
Our work zone for the day, cutting a new switchback through the burn zone.
We split into three groups; all working on different areas of the trail reroute and rebuild right near the saddle. The day’s tasks consisted of; moving logs/trees, building rock stairs, cutting out tread for the new trail, moving dirt, building log barriers and filling in the old trail with our dirt. I always forget how tough trail building is until I’m back out there lugging around 40lb bags of dirt and 12ft trees trunks.
Several of the OSMP staff hiked in Great Harvest sandwiches for lunch, so we all broke around 12:30pm to chow down! After devouring our sandwiches a few of us went for a short jog up South Boulder peak, only 0.2mi and 400ft from the saddle. This was one of the first times non-OPSMP employees had been up to the peak since last summer’s fire. South Boulder was a moonscape, the trees had been turned into burnt match sticks and the only signs of life were little bits of grass growing in the tread. Despite all this the trail was fairly easy to follow and we soon were atop South Boulder Peak staring off at the patch work of burned and unburned forest that adorned South Boulder Peak and Bear Peak.
Looking down the South Boulder Peak trail toward the saddle.
The afternoon was much of the same, dig up some rocks, level out the tread, move the dirt. By day’s end we’d built 4 new stairs, filled in the old trail, and cut approximately 60-80ft of new trail through some pretty rocky terrain. It felt good to give back, especially since our efforts meant Shadow Canyon was even closer to reopening to the general public. Zack, Dave, Beau and John from the OSMP were great to work with and its too bad more of us trail runners/hikers/climbers don’t participate in giving back to the parks in this way. We constantly use and abuse our lands, but very seldom put in the hard work that’s required to upkeep and rebuild them.
Trail leading around the front side of Lumpy Ridge in RMNP.
With my sluggish run at Quadrock the previous weekend, and the fact that my legs came out feeling so strong, it was tough forcing myself to ‘rest’ this week. After a few early week short runs, Thursday I did a TT up Sanitas to test my legs, coming in just 12sec off my personal best of 19:06. This coupled with 1.5 laps of Green Mt on Saturday AM with Homie, a hike up Shadow Canyon, and a beautiful loop of Lumpy Ridge in RMNP put me at 13000ft of gain and 40miles, a rest week of sorts. It’s good that my legs are feeling strong again because I’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of me the next 4 weeks; with nearly 300miles and 90000ft of gain slated for the bulk of my Hardrock training. Still #4 on the Waitlist, so hopefully that June 1st deadline brings some good news.