As most are probably well aware by now, we felt the need to close Axed and part of Mind Games due to erosion of the banks alongside the trails which are now encroaching upon the actual trails and creating a very dangerous situation.
During a Spring Trail Day, CORBA began the process of creating a new reroute of trail in this area. Although we made good progress on that reroute, there is still work that needs to be done in order to open it up for regular use.
There has been some discussion and suggestions on how to open up this area for use during the Winter. A number of us on the CORBA Board, as well as a few of CORBA’s current Master Trail Builders, took a look at the area during the past week. We have determined that the specific area where Axed switches back into Sarah’s Revenge is particularly precarious and it’s too dangerous to open that up for general use. Therefore, there is no good option to use that area as a temporary solution for the Winter.
We understand the concerns about how this could limit the access from one side of the park to the other on bike or on foot/snowshoes. The only other route down is on the main ski trails. We believe we can utilize the ski trails for our needed traffic, even if we need to designate a specific portion of it on the side for bike and snowshoe traffic.
However, we also believe that the reroutes that we have already created will very possibly be able to be used once the ground freezes and we get some snow cover. We believe this will easily be navigated via snowshoes and while some parts of the curves on the switchbacks may be questionable for biking, it would be possible to walk those parts and still maintain the access from one side to the other.
If weather permits, we do plan on scheduling a work day yet this Fall in order to complete things and make this statement moot. Otherwise, we will plan to complete this as early as possible in the Spring.
We realize that this situation is not ideal. That said, I assure you that our volunteers put in a lot of hard work for many, many hours of their own time in an effort to maintain our trails in the best condition possible. Unfortunately, there is always more work to be done and sometimes projects like these do not get completed as quickly as we’d like. Although we will never be perfect at all of this, we are working at ways we can be more efficient by empowering more members to help on a consistent basis (not just on Trail Days). More information on that will be coming soon.