A class was held at the Grants NM USFS field office for volunteers interested in adopting sections of the CDT— visiting at least twice a calendar year and willing to do trail work on their section, clearing corridor of brush, fixing tread, and sawing small fallen trees blocking pathway. The class was led by Gabe from the CDTC, who was a co-leader on the Gila River project.
At least 18 people attended the class, including Alvin from the Grants USFS office, Kerry from the Sandia office, many enthusiastic members of the Cibola Trail Alliance, and several Backcountry Horsemen, Zuni Mountain Chapter. Some people from Las Cruces were present, planning to adopt trail in the Silver City area.
He has a custom chuck-wagon rig and all his own kitchen equipment.
The trail we are working on today is Manzanitas, which goes between Hondo Canyon and the ridge, parallel to Gavilan and other trails in this system. We do lopping, sawing downed trees, fixing drainage to the creek we are hiking along, and repairing tread.
A team of two bring a long crosscut saw up near the ridge and work down, while the rest of us use smaller saws to clear what trees we can manage.
After a full day, Gary presents lasagna and peach cobbler from dutch ovens.
It has been a challenging day of physical effort, rewarding to fix trail and spend time with old friends and new. I can only spare this one day working on trail, but the rest of the group will be here several days. Courtney, Dave, Todd, Lynn, Mark, Jenny, Charlie R, Gary, and Ed are awesome volunteers and made my day here a happy one.
