Your legs might be in shape from early-season riding, but maybe it’s time for an upper-body workout.
Chopping at oak brush and moving dirt around with large handheld tools is sure to work everything from arm muscles to core muscles. All while doing your civic duty.
Trail-work season – Trails 2000 style – begins Saturday, and the Durango-area trails advocate group is hosting a party in conjunction. The party rolls from 9 a.m. to noon at the Carbon Junction Trailhead on the south end of Colorado Highway 3.
Trails 2000 hosts trail-work days and nights throughout the spring and summer to build and maintain local tracks for bikers, runners, hikers and horse riders. The work serves two main purposes, said Mary Monroe Brown, Trails 2000’s director since 2005.
“The number one goal is to connect with our community,” she said. “That’s the greatest thing about doing trail work.”
And the second priority is to determine what a trail needs, and do the work “right and robust.”
Trail season generally begins around Earth Day, which is April 22. This year, with the soil being dry, Trails 2000 decided to begin earlier.
Work generally ends in September or October, but last year, because of violent September thunderstorms that washed out many local trails, work continued until around Thanksgiving.
This year, regular Wednesday night trailwork will begin April 23.
Trails 2000 works in conjunction with local land managers with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, among others, to plan, build and maintain area trails.
In an average year, Monroe Brown said, 600 to 800 volunteers put in 3,500 hours on trail work.
Also this season, Trails 2000 has hired a 30-hours-a-week crew leader, Connor Brown (no relation to Monroe Brown). He will lead Saturday’s work session.
Trails 2000 was created in 1989. One of its first trail projects was to help build courses for the 1990 Mountain Bike World Championships, the first “official” world championships for the sport.
johnp@durangoherald.com
If you go
Trails 2000’s Trailwork Season Kick-Off Party will be held from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Carbon Junction Trailhead.
To get there from East Eighth Avenue and Santa Rita Drive in Durango, take Colorado Highway 3 south for 2.4 miles and turn left into the trailhead parking area just before the road hits U.S. Highway 550/160.
Long pants, long-sleeved shirt and closed-toe shoes are highly recommended, as are a sun hat and a water bottle. Serious Delights will provide coffee and baked goods. Trails 2000 will provide tools – grab one and head up the trail.
For more information, visit www.trails2000.org
