Still fixin' trail!

Hello Bloggers!

The Hot Shot Crew Blog has been a way for a while again. Just to show that we haven't been goofing off, we'd like to treat you all to some rad photos of our most recent work!

We wrapped up at Mt. Evans by making improvements to the Chicago Lakes Trail, which ascends towards the summit along a gorgeous cliff face.

Here, the trail is traversing a steep slope. In this section, a gap in the cliff leaves the trail unsupported from beneath, and it is slowly eroding away.

With the help of volunteers, we filled the gap with a retaining wall, which also supports a cribbed step (multiple rocks filled with soil to act as a single step) that widens and raises the tread of the trail.

This vantage point shows the size of the wall (almost 7 feet tall) built to support the trail above and fill the gap in the cliff. We built four of these types of walls on Mt. Evans.

On Mount of the Holy Cross, we've been working on the talus slopes of Half Moon Pass route. Our efforts are focused on defining a sustainable route through the confusing jumble of rocks, where hikers can easily lose the trail and wind up descending the wrong way across alpine tundra.

In this picture, a staircase sits in the background, unsupported over a gap in the trail.

We moved a large boulder into place to fill the gap, define the trail, and provide a step up to the stairs in the background. This is end of a section a ten such rocks placed to define the route.

Shown here is a soil gap between boulders in the Half Moon Pass Route. Hikers have been using this path to ascend through the talus, leading to erosion of the soil and loose rock in the trail.

We built a staircase up the gap that will give hikers a sustainable, stable path up the eroded section. Towards the top of the picture you can see the start of a check-step section holding the soil above the staircase.

The following pictures aren't before-and-afters, but are some of the best from our recent projects.

Here's a good shot of our work site on Holy Cross' talus slopes.

In this picture, Kate is enjoying the snow and 60 mph winds during one of our mornings on Mt. Evans. It was 5 degrees on the mountain's summit and 90-something in Denver.

This is how the weather turned out later that afternoon!

Finally, here's a shot taken of the Hot Shot Crew with all the folks from WRV and RMYC who worked with us on the Summit Lake Trail reroute. project. We're sitting on the wall built with the mini-excavator and filled with dump truck loads of gravel. The trail has been lifted from where the bottom tier sits to the top of the wall in order to bring the grade up to Americans with Disabilities Act standards.