Slaughterhouse in Jeopardy

[Red_Chili]

Email from Phil Walton- update on Slaughterhouse and Twin Cone

There will likely be an opportunity for the club to help with this:
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I had a ride-along-meeting with the ranger, and 2 other reps from the USFS. Glenn Graham(sp?) who is on the Rampart Ridge board joined us for the day to help represent COHVCO sort of.
The USFS reps were:
Ranger Hickenbottom
Steve Priest
Scott Dollus

We rode down Crow Gulch to the end and discussed what we're currently doing and what we'd like to do. The ranger has a sympathetic ear, but I think we all agree that the mud pits as they are currently treated is unmanageable. I think without our attention, the whole trail would likely be closed at this point.

Here is the ranger's plan:
- Put in a gate past the exit of the Slaughterhouse loop, but before the mud pits.
- I'll start an OHV grant application...as the work is beyond our scope, we'll count on outside help and more "contractor work".
- Include recovery of the area past the mud pits.
- Mostly the past-mud-pits will need rock fill, waterbar recovery and hardening and some road re-route.All the fill will be contracted out. We can potentially do some of the labor and will need to mobilize some of the COHVCO folks... (and likely at least one other club)
- Post-and-cable the mud pits.
- If progress isn't made in the next 2 years, the ranger plans to close down that part of the trail permanently.

Twin cone: The USFS coughed up some cash and plans to add a ton of fill. If all goes well it shoudl re-open in Sept. We still get access for trail cleanup on the 25th.

 

[nakman]

Ok, so the info someone had on our BOWAGWR was wrong- I thought we were saying the mud pits in question were down by that meadow we always stop at, before the little hill climb. But above it seems pretty clear that they're the original "mud pits," that we've all gone to in years past.

So you drive down that tippy hill where a tree almost smacks your roof on the left side, then when you get down to the road you can either turn right to go to the mud pits, or left to go back underneath stump hill.. so it's those mud pits that are slated to be shut down, not the ones caused by the spring way back at the meadow.

 

[Hulk]

I read it the same way. So the trail is not really in jeopardy, since those mud pits aren't even part of the trail.

I'm sure we can lend a hand when needed to do what's needed here.

 

[Red_Chili]

The spring in the meadow is what has come up as a serious concern by the rangers. Yeah, the trail is at risk.

 

[girlsfj40]

The hard thing about taking care of the trail will be keeping all of the kids out of the clean up area. When I went to high school alot of the kids would go back there to drink and whoop it up in thier 'four-wheel drives'. The locals go to the mud pits to mess around.

 

[AxleIke]

yeah, no joke. Its a pretty big highschool party place. I wonder if they could gate it at night.