This week was sophomore inspire week. During this week, we each did a service project. The one that I did was volunteering with trails 2000. Going into this, I was pretty excited. I was with a good group of friends, and we were going to be doing a little work on trails, maintaining the good outdoors culture of Durango. Our first day of work was doing trail reports for Durango nature studies. I had never thought about this particular of maintaining a trail system. The work entailed us splitting up into pairs and each going over a series of trails, taking measurements every 200 feet or so. These measurements included the tread width, the angle, what our analyzation of the overall quality of the trail was, and a description of the condition, including water damage, obstacles, signage, etc. This experience was completely new to me, and gave me a new perspective into how trails 2000 decided what kind of work a trail needs. I will never be able to look at a trail the same war, as now I will always be analyzing they slope, the back slope, and every sign of water damage. Wednesday was a very fun time and I think that this kind of outdoors and hands on kind of activity is a great way to get students engaged and doesn’t happen nearly often enough.
Thursday was completely different from Wednesday. We went out to a new trail that was being built near three Springs. This was primarily a bike trail. So the criteria were completely changed in terms of obstacles and overhanging branches. We were going through and helping finish the trail. This included cutting overhanging branches, taking down the ridges of dirt that the dozer left, making and packing down berms, smoothing out the trail sides, making the trail look pretty, etc. This trail work was not new to me, as I had helped build trails out at Heartwood. As anyone who has built a trail will know, there is a lot of work that goes into a good bike trail. This experience was new to me because we were a lot more concerned with appearance and there was a lot more uniformity that was going into this trail than the ones that I built out in heartwood. We worked for about 6 and a half hours. Over this time, we finished about 2 miles of trail. It made me respect the amount of time that went into the many many miles of trails that surround Durango. I have never before really thought much about the trails that I bike or hike on. I now know what goes into every aspect of the trails around me. It makes me respect the trails more. I also got a peek into what trails 2000 has to do to make the trail systems hat cross private, city, county, national, and BLM land. I always just thought that they built wherever they wanted. They have to go through many difficult permitting processes
Thursday was completely different from Wednesday. We went out to a new trail that was being built near three Springs. This was primarily a bike trail. So the criteria were completely changed in terms of obstacles and overhanging branches. We were going through and helping finish the trail. This included cutting overhanging branches, taking down the ridges of dirt that the dozer left, making and packing down berms, smoothing out the trail sides, making the trail look pretty, etc. This trail work was not new to me, as I had helped build trails out at Heartwood. As anyone who has built a trail will know, there is a lot of work that goes into a good bike trail. This experience was new to me because we were a lot more concerned with appearance and there was a lot more uniformity that was going into this trail than the ones that I built out in heartwood. We worked for about 6 and a half hours. Over this time, we finished about 2 miles of trail. It made me respect the amount of time that went into the many many miles of trails that surround Durango. I have never before really thought much about the trails that I bike or hike on. I now know what goes into every aspect of the trails around me. It makes me respect the trails more. I also got a peek into what trails 2000 has to do to make the trail systems hat cross private, city, county, national, and BLM land. I always just thought that they built wherever they wanted. They have to go through many difficult permitting processes