Recap: Fall Creek Dig Day
Last Saturday we hosted a momentous event–the first ever Dig Day under our new name, SCMTS! Thank you to event partner California State Parks and sponsors Dollars and Sense, Verve Coffee and West End Tap & Kitchen for supporting this extra-special event. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, we hadn’t been able to host one of our premier volunteer events for 18 months, and boy, were we happy to be back. It was a breath of fresh air to get out in the field with everyone for a day of fun, food, and trail maintenance in Fall Creek Unit of Henry Cowell State Park.
For those who don’t know, we’ll first take a minute to explain the term “Dig Day”. Dig Days are our largest volunteer events, and follow an annual schedule of ~12 per year. These are fully catered events, and give volunteers a chance to learn new skills and make new friends in a supportive environment. Each Dig Day includes breakfast, lunch, and post-dig snacks, plus a stacked raffle thanks to our generous sponsors. These events are free to the public and extremely popular (they usually fill up in just a few hours!) We have the next Dig Day of our 2021/2022 season coming up in early October; check out the link in the sidebar for more info on that.
Ok, now back to the recap…
Fall Creek was scorched by last year’s CZU Lightning Fire Complex, and many of the trails were badly damaged during the wildfire. In addition to trail tread issues throughout the park, bridges were burned, drains were clogged and, overall, the park’s landscape was forever changed. Our volunteers set out to create meaningful change and improve trail conditions in this beloved public open space.
Overall we had fifty-five volunteers join us for the Dig Day. Once everyone arrived, checked in, and signed up for a Trail Crew group, they grabbed some delicious Verve coffee and Bagelry bagels and circled up for introductions and a quick history lesson before digging into the day (literally).
Some cool history on the park: Fall Creek State Park has seen a lot of changes in the last hundred years, aside from the recent fires. From 1870 through 1919, the park, which encompasses the entire Fall Creek watershed, was a bustling lime operation, complete with a quarry, a cooperage, a barrel mill, and a lime kiln, all which can be seen from hiking trails in the lower portion of the park. In 1900, IXL Lime Company, the original owner of the operation, was bought by competitor Henry Cowell, who incorporated it into the Cowell Lime and Cement Company. In 1972, the last line of the Cowell family, Samuel “Harry” Cowell, gift-deeded most of what is now today just over 2,300 acres of land to California State Parks so that the public can enjoy over twenty miles of hiking and equestrian trails.
Learn more about the history of Fall Creek here: https://www.mountainparks.org/our-parks/henry-cowell/fall-creek
After bellies and minds were filled, we set out for the day’s work. Trail Crew Leaders met with their volunteer teams, briefly went over safety precautions and the details of tasks that each group would complete, and then had volunteers grab their tools and hike out into the burn zone to get to work.
Tasks for the day varied, and included everything from clearing drains, repairing trail tread, creating burn piles, moving charred logs out of the trail corridor, and last but certainly not least, carrying large pieces of lumber two miles into the forest for upcoming bridge construction(!). In addition to regular trail maintenance tasks, we also hosted our first in-person Trail Academy class in over a year, and taught a small group of volunteers the finer points of rigging (hoisting rock or timber using a griphoist).
The day was hot, the work was tough, and the lunch was delicious. West End Tap & Kitchen provided sandwiches, chips, and amazingly gooey cookies (shoutout to Cracked Cookies!) to each volunteer to keep spirits high and muscles moving throughout the day.
Following the dig, volunteers and Trail Crew Leaders hiked out of the park and regrouped for one of the best parts of any Dig Day–the post-work celebration! West End Tap & Kitchen provided beer to keep the good times flowing, Martinelli’s provided apple cider for the young’uns, and REI, Giro, and other sponsors contributed amazing raffle prizes for our volunteers. It was a joy to give away daypacks, fanny packs, all-natural outdoor skincare products (think bug spray), and full Giro cycling kits to our hardworking volunteers out in Fall Creek. Thank you to all sponsors for making this day extra-special for our participants!
This first Dig Day of the season builds on months of work from CA State Parks, the American Conservation Experience team, CA Conservation Corps members, and our professional SCMTS Trail Crew. These teams have been out in Fall Creek every day working hard to make the park safe, fun and healthy for both humans as well as natural flora and fauna. We're proud to have enthusiastic and hardworking volunteers come out to Fall Creek and build on the restoration progress that these fantastic partners have led throughout the property.
Every single volunteer made an everlasting impact on Fall Creek Unit that day. If you came out and joined us–thank you! Not only did you give back to the wellbeing of your community’s public lands, but you also contributed to a culture of positivity and inclusion out on our local trails. Together, we can create the trail future we all want to see in the Santa Cruz Mountains. This first Dig Day was a peek at that!
We’ve still got 10 more Dig Days coming up in the months ahead. We hope to see you at our next event out in the Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve! Check out our Dig Day webpage or sign up for our newsletter to hear about signups first.
Happy trails!
Team SCMTS
All photos generously provided by John Deven Photography!
