Mount Vernon’s volunteer trail builder program is now a designated Skagit Valley Food Co-Op “Tokens for Tomorrow” group. From now until the end of June, each time you bring your own bags when you shop you receive a token worth 5 cents for each bag, which you can place in a jar for the Trail Builders. Our volunteers are awesome but financial support of all kinds really helps the efforts at Little Mountain.
Fred's Trail - Maintenance Work Party
Mount Vernon’s volunteer trail builders are hosting a work party on May 22 from 10:00am to 4:30pm to perform maintenance on Fred's Trail. This trail is at the top of the south side of the mountain. Most of Little Mountain's hiking trails were user built many years ago. They are fun and sometimes steep. Increased traffic in recent years has caused much damage in places. We will work with trail designer Art Tuftee to harden, improve, and mitigate damage on Fred's Trail, the steep place between the junction of Juliann and West Loop trails and the road. Volunteers should be experienced hikers as the work area is challenging.
Here’s Ginny Darvill showing some sections of the trail that have been damaged by erosion.
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Put May 22 on your calendar and join us in building sustainable trails on Little Mountain. We'll meet at 10:00am on the Little Mountain access road.
Rock & Gravel Moved With the Aid of a High-Line
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Last Saturday's session was low on volunteers, but this was somewhat offset by the use of a high-line rigging for moving rock and gravel directly downhill from the access road to the trail where it was needed. This eliminated a half mile or so of manual wheelbarrow labor making the transportation of the rock much faster and easier.
Jim Thompson, a videographer from Anacortes, came out and shot some footage of the trail building in action. Here he's filming Art Tuftee, our high-line expert.
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Here the crew is loading up the power carrier.
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Thanks to everyone who turned out. Would be great to have you join us again.
Moving Rock & Gravel Using High-Line Trolleys
This Saturday we’re moving rock and gravel using two high-line trolley systems. We will be lowering buckets of rock and gravel down from the park access road on a steel cable to the middle of the La-Z-Boy trail. The area we need the material is the wettest section of La-Z-boy, an area that is half a mile in from either end of the trail. This is an important session, we need a lot of trail building volunteers. We hope to see you at Little Mountain, the session will run from 10:00 am to 4:30 pm.
Here is a high-line setup from one of our previous sessions.
Trail Builders moving rock and soil with high-line trolley