Fall Canyon Day 2010 featured a lot of restoration work down by the old Farmhouse – but there hasn’t been a trail to access any of that restored area. Summer Canyon Crew 2011 is currently working on fixing that, constructing a trail that extends a spur that overlooks the Farm to just below Canyon House, leading through native cherry trees and big leaf maple into some lovely views of the restored stream and meadow. Here’s some highlights of that process:
The slope below Canyon and Garden House to the meadow is exceptionally steep, rendering stairs somewhat impractical. Running a trail through the farm property itself to climb the slope where it was less steep was also less than ideal, as the Farm habitat is still fragile after the restoration work of last year and needs more time to mature – not to mention the perpetual sogginess that would make jogging on the trail a muddy affair. Our solution? Make the slope less steep!
We started by cutting down some large non-native Norway maples to use as posts. Clearing out these non-natives also had the handy side effect of clearing out space in the canopy for native big leaf maples to grow in. Zac sizing up a tree for chainsawing:
We then had to cut in holes in the bank, and then drive the poles in. This was sometimes a bit harrowing:
Of course, taking advantage of the fact that we had just created an ideal roost, we decided to throw in a bird house on one of the poles:
Afterwards, we stripped down the branches from the trees we had felled – “whips”. We also cleared out young red oaks, Norway and sycamore maples for this purpose, and thinned out a tangle of young native cherry trees.
These we then braided between the large poles…
…and stuffed with the small branches and leaves. All parts of the non-natives we cut down were therefore utilized in this process.
Our fence made, we then got a load of topsoil dumped on the bank above us, reused from the construction of the new tennis courts by the Grove. We then filled in this cradle with dirt to make the trail:
Next week, Canyon Crew will be planting in sword ferns and other native plants on the steep upper slope to stabilize it, as well as bringing in bark chips to finish the surface. In the fall, we will put in dogwood and willow shoots into the weave, which will stabilize the new bank in the long term. We still need to finish the portion between this piece of the trail and the original spur, so the trail is unimproved at best – please use caution! Look forward to next week’s entry where we will showcase the finished project – a brand new trail for the Reed Canyon.
