I love our Animas River Trail and travel on it daily. But two things are bothering me. First, what’s up with the water seep behind the high school? Its appearance certainly coincided with the earthwork on the DHS athletic field. Second, the trail is something like eight miles long from 32nd Street to the Rivera Bridge. However, there are only mileage markers from 1.0 North to 3.0 South. Is the city planning to install markers on the rest of the trail? – Avid Trail User
Action Line also perceived perpetual percolations during perfunctory peregrinations.
Yup. There’s a boatload of water coming out of a culvert that was obviously installed behind the high school many years ago.
Just to be clear, “boatload” is a highly technical term, somewhere between “a bunch” and “a whole lot.”
Let’s just say that if there was any more gushing water, some local kayaker would put-in and claim the first descent of the tributary.
Action Line estimates that the 50-yard stretch has got to be rated at least Class I on the official International Scale of River Difficulty.
For those who have never been on a river trip, Class I is just a notch above flat water on a lake.
Therefore, paddling the seepage won’t require a personal flotation device, but flowing water along the trail can be a big deal.
The west side of the pavement is soaked, which will be an issue when it freezes this winter. Meanwhile, a crack across the asphalt has become a drainage channel.
The good news is that most of the backed-up water flows southward to a culvert under the trail.
If water continues to gush, some remedial measures might be required.
That’s according to our good friend and landscape architect Scott McClain, whose special post with the city is POST specialist. (POST stands for parks, open space and trails.)
“We’ve definitely seen more seepage this year coinciding with the work on the field,” he said. “We’ll check in with the high school construction crews.”
The trail from DHS to the fish hatchery features several natural springs, some of which increased their flows during past construction projects.
“We had the same situation at the library,” he said.
Scott is monitoring the seeping site, and “we’ll address that if we need to,” he assured.
The flow might be temporary, so tearing up the trail and installing drains might not be necessary at this point. Plus, it might be a new “wetland” that can’t be messed with.
In the meantime, Scott and his POST people have umpteen trail improvements in the works, including the Oxbow extension, engineering for Wilson Gulch and several realignments.
And those realignments are why mile markers aren’t yet installed on many parts of the Animas River Trail.
Some realigned sections are shorter or longer than the legacy trail. If mile markers were installed before the final configurations are complete, they’d be inaccurate.
“Then we’d get all these calls from angry people screaming about how we ruined their training regimen and invalidated their personal-bests by 3 seconds because a mile marker is off by 10 feet,” Scott said with a chuckle.
Of course, he’s kidding. But you can totally see an obsessive uber-exerciser working up a sweat over it.
In any case, the city will go the distance for better trails, and that includes the POST people installing mile markers.
It might not be posthaste, so we’ll have to keep you posted.
Email questions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. You can request anonymity if you let freedom ring by not answering any phone calls from politicians.
