Sandia Ellis Trail 2019

The NMVFO held a trail building project from Friday July 26 to Monday in the Sandia Mountains, car camping (after two changes of venue in planning) at Capulin Snow Play Area and working on the nearby Ellis Trail.

The Play Area had a shelter that proved useful to hide from rain the first evening.

Trail work involved several small re-routes on heavily traveled path, so extra care was taken to engineer a maintainable tread.

Much rock work happened.

Christina and Nick were project cooks for the first time, doing a first-rate job.

Along with agency lead Kerry and project leader Jenny, we were joined by Mike T, Mark, Nick, Christina, Jake (joining us from Las Cruces !), Spencer, and for one day Mike, Chris, Kasey, and Jim.

CDT Segment 86 Recon

I went with Cairn to a section of CDT trail outside of Pie Town to see if this would be a good section to adopt. Cairn likes 4WD, and I like trails, so this seemed to be a good overlap.

From Mangas Road south, we took a series of two-tracks with high center, not really suitable for normal cars, and arrived at the northern terminus to “Segment 86”, where BLM land ends and USFS land begins. A trailhead sign was here, unexpectedly, since the road access seemed pretty challenging to me.

The trail here is single track, real constructed trail headed south over a rise of low mountains, among juniper and pinon. Water bars and a rolling dip show that someone is caring for the trail and trying to keep erosion in check.

Cairn stands next to a cairn near the trailhead that needs work.

Continue reading “CDT Segment 86 Recon”