Summer Evening Trailwork Comes to an End

Our Summer Evening Trailwork sessions, led by volunteer Trail Crew Leaders Andrea Lee and Tom Wilson, have come to an end as of last Wednesday, September 18, after six months of service in DeLaveaga Park. Every Wednesday from 5:30-7:00pm Tom and Andrea led small crews of volunteers on various projects in the park. MBOSC and City of Santa Cruz Staff collaborated on a punch-list of trail issues that needed addressed, while Tom and Andrea led the completion of each project, providing routine suggestions and feedback. One of their first projects was brushing all trails in DeLaveaga Park. Among this routine maintenance they also performed drainage repairs and made tread improvements. Over on La Corona Trail, the crew repaired a failing culvert, which is a tunnel carrying a stream or open drain under a road or railroad. This included digging out the culvert and repaired the tunnel with embedded rock to prevent water from staying on the trail. For a few weeks the crew worked on the Shakespeare Connector Trail at the north end of the park. Here the crew replaced a section of trail that was taken out by a fallen tree. They added more steps to give trail users a more enjoyable experience. On Shakespeare, they also performed rock work, bringing the trailbed a bit further in from the less-stable drop off. In 2017 MBOSC partnered with the City of Santa Cruz to design and build this pedestrian-only trail in Delaveaga Park to connect the Prospect Heights neighborhood with the Shakespeare Santa Cruz outdoor theater venue. The trail replaced a user-created trail that had some erosion and accessibility issues. Parts of the old trail were too steep for many trail users and were experiencing accelerated erosion. MBOSC worked with MBOSC volunteers and City of Santa Cruz staff to construct a more gradual replacement trail armored with steps, retaining walls, and landings designed to resist erosion and allow users to walk the trail comfortably. Thanks to our Summer Evening Trail Crew, the trail has received some upgrades. Finally, the crew improved the entrance to the bridge on Parkway Trail by building a small rock retaining wall, which in turn protects the bank under the bridge by preventing erosion into the creek. We had a total of 61 volunteers perform over 90 hours of trail work in DeLaveaga Park. All this to say, a final evening session that included riding and beverages at Sante Adarius was well-deserved! We are so grateful to have help from people like Andrea and Tom and we look forward to stewarding more land in Santa Cruz in the future. We want to thank City of Santa Cruz staff for the partnership!