{"id":1303,"date":"2015-10-17T01:46:40","date_gmt":"2015-10-17T08:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/?p=1303"},"modified":"2015-10-11T19:31:57","modified_gmt":"2015-10-12T02:31:57","slug":"volunteering-outdoors-trail-maintenance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/featured\/volunteering-outdoors-trail-maintenance\/","title":{"rendered":"Volunteering Outdoors – Trail Maintenance"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Badger<\/p>\n

I recently took a hike on the Badger Lake Trail in the Sky Lakes Wilderness of south-central Oregon with a group of friends. \u00a0Nothing unusual about that and we’ll have a story and video about the trip in the eMagazine before too long. \u00a0What was unusual is that, as a group of six, we completed two miles of trail maintenance while on the hike.<\/p>\n

Trail Maintenance<\/h1>\n

We signed on as Forest Service volunteers. \u00a0We\u00a0were provided, hardhats, gloves,\u00a0tools and a leader and set forth to improve the trail. \u00a0In this case, the trail was in pretty good shape compared to many I have traveled on, but the vegetation (mostly huckleberry bushes and a few small trees) was creeping into the trail and the Forest Service likes to see maintenance efforts open a\u00a0six-foot wide path. \u00a0That should keep the trail easily passable for a couple years anyway.<\/p>\n

\"Mt

Mt. McLaughlin and Four Mile Lake as seen from the Badger Lake\u00a0Trail<\/p><\/div>\n

Water will tend to run down trails that aren’t flat\u00a0and wash off the soil if it isn’t diverted periodically. \u00a0These diversions, or\u00a0cross drains, look like a dip in the trail. \u00a0Many of them were filling in with dirt so one of our group dug those out so they would function properly.<\/p>\n

As you can see in the photo at the top of the page, most of the trail didn’t really need much work. \u00a0This is at the start of the trail near Four Mile Lake. \u00a0It gets less use the farther one gets from the parking lot. \u00a0With less use, \u00a0the vegetation is better able to grow into the trail. \u00a0There were many places where the trail narrowed and several yards needed to be brushed out. \u00a0That’s mostly what we did.<\/p>\n

Volunteering<\/h1>\n
\"Badger

Badger Lake<\/p><\/div>\n

If you would like to participate in work like this, \u00a0contact your local Forest Service Ranger Station (find your favorite forest at\u00a0www.fs.fed.us<\/a> then get the contact information from the left hand column).\u00a0 Talk to the trails person, usually a recreation staff person. \u00a0They should be able to sign you up, then let you know when opportunities to participate in trail maintenance work come up.<\/p>\n

Better yet, \u00a0if you can get together a group, you can work with the Forest Service to set up a date for your work adventure and make it a community effort. \u00a0Besides another excuse to get outdoors and explore, volunteering lets you give back to the others that enjoy trails the same way you do.<\/p>\n

Please Share<\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I recently took a hike on the Badger Lake Trail in the Sky Lakes Wilderness of south-central Oregon with a group of friends. \u00a0Nothing unusual about that and we’ll have a story and video about the trip in the eMagazine before too long. \u00a0What was unusual is that, as a group of six, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,7,2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activities","category-adventure","category-featured","category-helping-others"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1311,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions\/1311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}