Month: September 2024

Fourteen NMVFO volunteers gathered at the Trail Canyon Trailhead, many camping overnight, for a cook-supported one day lopping project on the Manzano Crest going north of the Trail Canyon intersection. This was my first visit to Trail Canyon, and the drive in on the unmaintained road was amazingly bad: high clearance vehicles and brave drivers only, please. This is a shame, because the trailhead area hosted countless maple trees and seedlings, and the colors will be amazing in the fall, and much less crowded than 4th of July Campground.

After hiking up to the crest on a gentle grade, we hiked further until the brush got really thick, and lopped all day.

Ten NMVFO volunteers partnered with the Albuquerque Wildlife Federation, returning to Limestone Canyon over Labor Day weekend to continue restoration work in Limestone Canyon and Fisher Canyon.

At the beginning of our first workday, Sue, who had worked as a forester with the USFS, gave a short talk and described the historical background of Limestone Canyon, and the timber sale that had started the restoration of the meadow.

My crew went up Limestone, past a pipe fence that had been bent by some past flooding event.

Further up Limestone we found running water in the drainage, from the lightning storm the night before.

We hiked up to a low concrete dam that had been built many years ago by Bill Zeedyk, who pioneered many of the water restoration techniques we would be practicing this weekend.

My group spent the day building “beaver dams” on Limestone to slow water and capture fine sediment from the flow, and using stakes to pin the branches so they would not float away.

The next day my crews built one-rock dams near the confluence of Limestone and Fisher.

Related Posts:

• Limestone Canyon 2023
• Limestone Canyon Scouting 2024