Trails Alliance of Santa Fe

Even during the pandemic Santa Fe’s trails are undergoing care. Tim Roger’s (tim@sfct.org) work crews are limited to five but continue to improve trails in La Tierra, Dale Ball, Sun Mountain and Atalaya. Please let him know if you’d like to work alongside of knowledgeable volunteers who know how to build sustainable trails that don’t wash away at the first rain gusher (long lost though they might be).

New trail builds haven’t stopped either. The Chili Line Trail in La Tierra will add a history lesson about Santa Fe’s railroad era. New trails are being planned in the Galisteo Basin. A new neighborhood trail along Camino de los Montoyas offers a safe route by a road which has no shoulder for walkers or bikes.

The pandemic is not going away so all of us need to do an even better job at social distancing and wearing a mask. Avoiding packed parking lots at trailheads is one technique for finding trails less traveled. Always wear a mask because you never know who will appear around the next bend. If possible step off the trail to let someone else pass no closer than six feet.

Margaret Alexander

Most of us have seen an uptick in trail use during the pandemic shutdown. Parking lots are full to over-flowing. We have lots of trails to spread out on and folks are used to moving off the trail as they meet others. Please try to go to trails and parks which don’t receive as many visitors.

A photo of the Rio en Medio “trail head,” such that it is, was posted on FaceBook, jammed with cars with neighbors horrified by the trash and illegal parking. The U.S. Forest Service is considering shutting down the parking area as described in this press release: Rio en Medio

The Trails Alliance of Santa Fe usually sends out crews of volunteers to work on our trails during the summer. To adhere to our governor’s guidelines for the pandemic, our crews have been limited to five people. Our usual first-Monday-of-the-month lunch meetings at Il Vicino in Santa Fe have been suspended. Until meetings can resume, our calendar of activities, including work days, will look very bare.

If you’d like to help out during the pandemic, please consider make a donation. You’ll find an easy to use donate button at the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe website.

Hello trail lovers, on Saturday August 31 people will be coming from all over the country and even 5 Tarahumara runners from Copper Canyon in Mexico to run the Endurance Santa Fe Mountain Trail Races.

We need a few more people to help out. There are volunteer positions at aid stations, helping runners get food and water, on the course as sweepers, following the last runners and picking up the course marking flagging and other jobs.

If you would like to be a part of this fun time please contact Peter Olson at peter.olson.runs@gmail.com. By the way, Peter is a big supporter of trails being a certified trail crew leader, sawyer and steward of La Piedra trail. He works to keep our trails in good shape and usable!

Every hiker has set out on a trail only to discover that conditions were other than expected, even if the hiker was familiar with the trail from past visits or from consulting a hiking guide. Access roads, trailheads, creek crossing, trail regulations, and the trails themselves are always changing. To help hikers avoid surprises and prepare for their outings, the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe has created an online message board where hikers can share current information about trail conditions (information too timely for a guidebook). About closures, washouts, snow, mud, missing signs, damaged bridges, navigational challenges, difficult crossings, access road problems, etc. – whatever hikers believe other hikers would want to know before setting out on the trail. The message board is a shared and open resource. Anyone can check the board before a hike. Anyone can contribute new or updated information after a hike. At present, the message board covers all sixty-eight trails in the Sierra Club’s Day Hikes in the Santa Fe Area (Eighth Edition). The board is accessible from any computer or smartphone at santafetrails.boardhost.com.

Here’s a link to a poster we hope to put at a lot of trailheads. Trail condition Poster

Nick Knorr

On the La Tierra Trails, mitigating chronic erosion has been an evolutionary process. Dirt grade reversals (i.e. building up dirt berms across a trail to divert water) have not held up. They disappear after just one season. Lately we’ve experimented with laying a foundation of modest-sized boulders to insure that the berm holds up over time. In some cases the dirt “ramp” leading up to the rocks has not stayed in place or was built too short. We’re learning and modifying the work we do.

A new grade reversal means that mountain bikers at speed need to take extra care on sections of the trails where there are severe ruts and gullies.

Here’s a link to what volunteers did at La Tierra this April – La Tierra April Work Days

Please let us know if you come upon trail problems. There’s a place to report on this page.

Getting involved with trail maintenance is a good way to understand changes that happen to your favorite trail. Trails Alliance members are trained to analyze trail problems and come up with sustainable solutions. If you want to get involved contact tim@sfct.org and check the calendar on this website for our next work day.

Margaret Alexander

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During the week of March 25, 2019, 12 students from the University of Missouri — or Mizzou, as they like to be called — along with their chaparones, journeyed to Santa Fe to complete a service work project during their spring break.  Over five days, these hardy and fun-loving students tackled some of the most pressing maintenance projects at the Galisteo Basin Preserve, including building rock check dams, shoring up arroyo headcuts that were undercutting trails, and fixing erosion issues on several GBP hike/bike and multi-use trails, such as the Eliza’s Ridge Trail, Shepard’s Trail, Sophie’s Spur, South Wagon Trail and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty. They were expertly led by Peter Prince — who coordinated their service project at GBP — as well as other highly experienced crew leaders from the Santa Fe Fat Tire Society: Dean Fry, Henry Lanman, Pat Brown and Tim Fowler.  Incredibly over the five-day period, they completed 792 volunteer hours at the Preserve!  When their volunteer hours are added to the hours put in by their crew leaders from SFFTS, over 1000 hours of volunteer maintenance work was completed at the GBP.  This is the second highest level of volunteer work ever completed on a Santa Fe area trail — just behind the Hustle and Flow trail at La Tierra Trails that was built over a 3 week period. The SFFTS has designated all the students honorary club members to celebrate their extraordinary efforts at GBP!

Our local trails are just drying out from the snow melt, however, mud season will last off and on through the monsoons.  Everyone knows about growing an inch or more as mud gloms onto the bottom of shoes.  What folks don’t know is how biking, hiking, or riding in muddy conditions can severely damage trails.

Divots and grooves are obvious damage that often gets ironed out as time goes on. Until then, the divots and grooves are dangerous for bikers and hikers.  What’s permanent is the damage caused when we try to avoid the mud and walk beside the trail.  The trail gets wider and wider, uglier and uglier.

If you get caught in the mud, please, please, walk or ride through it down the middle of the trail.

Yes, you’ll get dirty, shoes and tires, but a hose job can wash off the muck.  If you want beautiful single track, you have to stay in it.  Detours around the mud cause permanent damage.

1000 pounds of horse does even more damage to the sides of trails.  Responsible riders need to stay off of muddy trails.

So riders, walkers, bikers, please respect the trails and stay away on mud days.  There are lots of paved trails to substitute or try an arroyo instead.

Margaret Alexander

Every month the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe meets at lunch to discuss our favorite subject, trails. ( Il Vicino, noon, on the first Monday of the month to be precise). To us, trails are dirt, narrow, sustainable, scenic, and on land accessible to the public. Beyond this simple definition, there’s a lot going on.

The January, 2019 lunch brought us a visitor from OTAG, the legendary hiking group called Over The Arroyo Gang. For years OTAG has adopted the Borrego-Bear Wallow loop in the Santa Fe National Forest, working on trail maintenance. (By the way, OTAG is grateful to the Fat Tire Society of Santa Fe which completed a major re-route on the Borrego portion of the trail in 2017-18) OTAG would like to develop another core of volunteers to do trail work.

OTAG’s request was an example of the mosaic that forms the volunteers who maintain and build Santa Fe’s trails, whether on city, county, National Forest or BLM lands. Beside mountain bike enthusiasts, volunteers are drawn from hiking groups like OTAG and high school organizations like those at Capital, Waldorf, and the Masters Charter School. The Masters in particular has a Public Lands class that works each Friday. They are responsible for the new and improved Little Tesuque Trail which has hundreds of new users.

Backcountry Horsemen are another group that provides volunteers for trails. (If I’ve left anyone out, please respond, and we’ll add your name.)

The Fat Tire Society of Santa Fe donated a collection box in the Galisteo Preserve so that everyone can contribute to the maintenance of that fine system of trails.

Money helps, of course, paying for tools, rentals, archeology review, but the consensus of our lunch group is that organizing, recruiting, and training new volunteers are the primary needs of all trail groups including the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe.

If you’re interested in helping Santa Fe’s trails, please join us on the first Monday of the month, noon, at Il Vicino.

You are on a trail. An aspen has fallen across the trail that’s too big to move. What do you do? The old way was to try to figure out if you’re on county land, city land, national forest land, Nature Conservancy land and then try to figure out how to send the appropriate land manager a message about the problem.

The new, improved way to alert land managers about trail problems is simply go to the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe website https://trailsallianceofsantafe.org/report-a-trail-problem/ or click on the “To Report Trail Damage” link on the right side of our home page. TAOSF volunteers will direct your message to the right land manager. All you have to do is answer a few questions which can help to get the repairs done.

The recent rains have created many new gullies and rough spots on our trails. Expert mountain bike riders may find these new hazards thrilling, but most riders and hikers are having a hard time staying upright. TAOSF volunteers work on trails to make them safer, not easier. If you want to learn more about trail work, please come at lunch time to Il Vicino on the first Monday of each month and meet TAOSF volunteers

Margaret Alexander

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Lately the Santa Fe New Mexican has been full of articles on the question “what’s a weed,” with many definitions of what constitutes a nuisance. I happen to be a devotee of wildflowers, native plants, and grasses, but there’s one that questions my faith: goatheads. This little devil hits our trails with a spikey seed that punctures tires. It particularly likes disturbed areas such as trail heads.

A first for Dale Ball Trails: removal of goathead infestation next to a newly-planted tree at the old Filter Plant Building site, Sept. 5, 2018

You can be a help to your fellow bikers by pulling them up whenever you find them. Pulling up by the root is the best, but if it breaks off, that helps too, by preventing the seeds from maturing.

It’s a shame to think of our trails being ruined by goatheads. If everyone plucks a few from trails and trail heads, the problem goes away without poisons. Please help!

Margaret Alexander

Now that the Forest Service trails are open again, it’s time to talk about cows. Mostly cows are gentle creatures, however at least one report of injuries from an attacking cow occurred in July. A nervous cow with a calf knocked two hikers off of a steep, narrow trail. The cow may have been doubly apprehensive because of unleashed dogs nearby. If you find cows on the trail, don’t attempt to shoo them away. Take a detour or wait until they’ve cleared the trail. The calves are getting older so cows should become less apprehensive as the summer goes on, but still, take care.

The recent rains opened up the national forests to hikers again, but also caused erosion damage. If you find a spot which needs help from trained trail volunteers, be sure to post observations on this website. The TAOSF always needs volunteers, so contact us via the website.

Margaret Alexander

Due to several days of higher humidity and rain, the Santa Fe National Forest (SFNF) will lift the closure order and stage 2 fire restrictions on Monday, July 9 at 8:00 a.m. for the first time since entering full forest closure on June 1.

“We noticed conditions starting to improve two weeks ago when moisture levels increased due to higher humidity,” said James Melonas, forest supervisor.  “The recent rain is the beginning of what we can expect to be a good monsoon season. The Carson and Cibola National Forests are closely monitoring local conditions to determine the safe timing for the lifting of any closures and restrictions.”

Due to high fire potential, all trails in the Santa Fe National Forest (details) and some trails in adjacent Santa Fe County Open Space (details) and are closed until further notice. If you want to read an interesting article on the USFS decision to close the forest click here.

All city trails and most county trails remain open.  Actual closing of County trails as announced by the County has been piecemeal.  Since there is not much awareness among the general public around which particular trails are managed by the City, County, or national forest, particularly in and around the Dale Ball Trails system, SFCT created a map showing the restrictions as announced.

we headed over to work on a trail in Santa Fe Estates that continues the alignment of the Arbolitos Trail to connect to the top of the paved Canada Rincon Trail – a significant link for the GUSTO initiative that was also prioritized as a natural-surface connection in Santa Fe’s Metropolitan Bicycle Master Plan of 2012.
We had been talking about fixing up this “informal trail” for a long time. It is in fact a formal alignment shown in subdivision documents but was ultimately created by users. The trail just needed a little tender loving care in the form of tread definition, pruning, and a short re-route. We also gathered rocks into the wheelbarrow to help create a better arroyo crossing near the bottom of the trail.

Tim met up with five volunteers at La Tierra Trails the morning of June 13, including three members of the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe and two new recruits. We removed loose rocks from the tread and improved storm drainage south and east of Junction 2 to Junction 6. …Just in time for the monsoons, we hope!

6 volunteers led by Tim Rogers showed up and did maintenance on the trail from the corner of Ridge Top road and Tano Road that connects up with the la Tierra trail system. Signs should be going up soon to show trail users where the new connector trail starts. The trail skirts the edge of the new development along Ridge Top road.

9 hardy souls put in some new signs and did a lot of rock work on the new trail from the parking lot to Dale Ball Central. The photo show some of the large rock work done by the group. The Santa Fe Fat Tire Society put the bridge across the might Santa Fe River last week and the trail is now open to all.

The event will be held at the Caja del Rio and the organizers are in need of 5-6 groups of 4 people to run aid stations on May 26. Any and all volunteers are most welcome and revered. If you want to learn more or volunteer send an email to peter.olson.runs@gmail.com

Margaret Alexander

Last fall I promised to check out the Chili Line Trail at the end of Buckman Road at the Rio Grande. A group of us did, but never found the trail. Instead we hiked south along the river on the Soda Springs Trail, a really spectacular route with views of the river from way above.

A note on the Chili Line Trail: the latest edition of the Sierra Club’s Day Hikes in the Santa Fe Area gives explicit directions to the the trail, but there are a confusing set of dirt roads and gates which led us astray. Another warning: we parked our cars on the river side of an open gate. Big mistake! When we returned a security guard had closed the gate and we were locked in until we figured out the gate’s mechanism.

This spring the volunteers of the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe are heading out to maintain and build area trails. For example, a trail from near the dog park to the La Tierra Trails is ready to hike and ride. Besides establishing the tread, volunteers cleared away bags of trash and debris. The La Tierra Torture mountain bike race is moving back to La Tierra so volunteers are working to get those trails in shape. The lack of rain and snow makes trail repair very much harder because the dirt can’t hold together.

The Santa Fe Conservation Trust is the guardian of Santa Fe’s trails and helps the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe organize the stewardship of our dirt trails.

Margaret Alexander

Don’t tell anyone but the aspen’s transformation into  golden glory has been slightly disappointing in the last couple of years.  Blame caterpillars, fungus, and warm weather I guess.  Another tree has been fantastic year after year for fall yellow:  cottonwoods.  They like water and lower altitudes so they are found in bosques, along arroyos or anywhere there’s a little extra moisture.

The trails at the southern end of the Galisteo Basin Preserve have some great cottonwoods and I found more looking down the views from the Cerrillos Hills State Park.  Ojo Cliente Spa has trails near cottonwoods and, closer to home, they can be found on the Little Tesuque Creek Trail a mile or so north of 10,000 Waves.

Next week I’ll scout the Chili Line Trail at Buckman Road and the Rio. I hope to find some heroic old trees there. The leaves will be gone, but I’ll add it to my personal list of cottonwood trails for next fall.

November 2017

We need your help to raise $2,500 for the “Glorieta Access Trail”!

BACKGROUND: Glorieta Camps world-class trail system has played host to many important Mt. Bike events over the last few years, including the Big Mountain Enduro, and the USA Cycling State Championships.  Currently, however, access to all the Camps trails is ONLY by permission only, usually  during organized events and races.  The Santa Fe Fat Tire Society (SFFTS) worked with Glorieta Camps to design an access trail that avoids the main campus area and connects with all of those cool trails surrounding the perimeter.

The “Glorieta Access Trail” will be hand built by volunteers under the direction of SFFTS Crew Leaders, but this project NEEDS FUNDING. Your contribution will cover the costs of every aspect of this trail build, including paying for supplies and equipment, providing food and drinks to the volunteers, trail signage, access gates, fencing removal, as well as printing and distribution of trail material.

This project is part of the International Mountain Biking Association’s (IMBA) “Dig-In” Campaign! Some of your donation will also support IMBA’s continued efforts at protecting our trails and increasing our national mountain bike network.  “Dig-In” is  68 different projects in 31 US states and the Glorieta access trail is the only project in the New Mexico state.

This is IMPORTANT Because: The “Glorieta Access Trail” will be open to the public for hiking and biking, providing on-demand access to Glorieta Camps’ extensive trail network…opening the Camps trails to all of us!

Please go to https://win.imba.com/digin and make a contribution to the Santa Fe Fat Tire Society Project.
http://www.santafefattiresociety.org/

Peter Olson received a link to an article on “Hiking Etiquette 101: The 12 Trail Rules You Should Know” from the folks in England that make the green wellies (green rubber boots). The Trails Alliance has a “rule” of not providing links to commercial organizations on our web site but it got us to thinking that we needed a link to something about trail etiquette on our site. So we hunted around on the web and found a good trail etiquette graphic on the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance web page and they graciosly gave us to the OK to put it on our site. You’ll find a Trail Etiquette link on the right hand margin of our page. (Boulder Mountainbike Alliance, bouldermountainbike.org)

Standing and riding together for national monuments
By Mark Allison and Brent Bonwell Jul 22, 2017

Wow that’s a lot of hours! The hours were divided between hours spent on trails for the City 2426hr, County 1560 hours, USFS 1555.25 hours and the Gallisteo Basin Preserve 345 hours. With volunteers organizations from the Santa Fe Fat Tire Society leading the way with 1180 hours, the BMX/Freeride/moto-x volunteers at 824 hours followed by the Trails Alliance’s 670 hours.

There is something new on the left sidebar of our web pages called “Trail Conditions”. The Santa Fe Fat Tire Society created this twitter feed several years ago so that people could easily report the condition of the trail they just rode on. We decided to give it a try on our site. You can comment on anything to do with trails in our area, if there is mud or you want people to know that the wild flowers are blooming. The process of “feeding” the tweet is easy and the details can be found here: How to Post Trail conditions

Thirty-four new junction signs have been installed on the Santa Fe City-side of the Dale Ball Trails, and soon another ten will be installed on the County sections, as well as on the La Piedra and Little Tesuque trails! The Trust and volunteers from the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe have been hard at work installing them, so your wayfinding will be easier on these eastern foothill trails.
Thanks to the City of Santa Fe Parks and Recreation Division for funding them. The old ones had been up there for over ten years, and definitely needed a facelift.

Please click on the links below to see information regarding the Santa Fe National Forest Fall 2016 Field Trips and Wilderness Evaluation Meetings relating to the forest plan revision.
Forest Revision Plan Field Trips
Public Meetings on Santa Fe Forest Plan Revision

Santa Fe County has great new resource on trails in the county. We will add it to our Local Trials list and you can check it out here.

It seems impossible, but once again volunteer time spent working on trails in 2015 broke a record: over 5000 hours. The volunteer organization that has evolved under the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe guidance is an over-the-top success.

The Santa Fe Conservation Trust provides the administrative support that keeps the Alliance working smoothly through the Trails Program Manager.  This position is possible through a professional services agreement with the City of Santa Fe for “City Trail Volunteer Coordinator” services, an arrangement that was promoted by BTAC (the City’s Bike and Trails Advocacy Committee) and funded by City Council.  With this support, the Trust hired Tim Rogers as its Trails Program Manager to keep the city-side of trails hopping (see www.sfct.org/trails/sfct-trail-events-in-2015).

On the county-side, Carol Branch of the Santa Fe County Community Services organizes trail maintenance and community events. We also provide the Forest Service with volunteers, coordinated by Jennifer Sublett.

This year the Trust found a home for a key asset: our large accumulation of specialized tools.  Many thanks to Murray Brott of A-1 Self Storage for donating storage space without which we couldn’t accomplish dozens of work days on the trails.

A key partner in trail projects is the Santa Fe Fat Tire Society. Many of our volunteers come to us through the SFFTS. Working with mountain bike riders, two new trail initiatives blossomed in 2015: a new flow trail and the Grand Unified Trail System initiative. The flow trail is a one-way, one mile trail in La Tierra which attracts mountain bike riders, both local and tourist. The Grand Unified Trail System is an initiative to link trail networks all around Santa Fe. The Grand Unified Trail System will require coordination among many state, county, city, private, and federal organizations. The Trust received a private grant to coordinate this initiative.

In the County, The Masters Program, a charter high school at the Santa Fe Community College, has built a trails maintenance community service project, training teenagers in best practices. The County has also instituted a Teen Court Program to work on trails.

The City, County and Keep Santa Fe Beautiful (KSFB) are providing support to replace trail-head and faded Dale Ball junction signs; the Trust and County installed an interpretive sign on the La Piedra Trail which has become an important destination for hikers; and the County installed new signs on Talaya Hill Open Space. Trails Alliance volunteers worked with County and City staff to get the signs planted.

The key to the successes of the Trails Alliance of Santa Fe is the way it gathers public and private land managers with volunteers to work together to improve trails. The Santa Fe Conservation Trust’s professional services agreement with the City of Santa Fe provides invaluable assistance to our success.

If you love trails, here’s a great way to help them.
The Galisteo Basin Preserve (www.galisteobasinpreserve.com) allows hikers, bikers, and equestrians to use their trails. This is a non-profit organization which needs help to maintain its wonderful trail network.

If you donate by the end of the year your donation will be matched by a challenge grant from an anonymous donor so even if you can only donate a little it will help a lot!

Your donation helps maintain trails which become eroded by wash-outs or over-use. Signs, parking lots, maps, and roads all require funding. Without your help, the trails will suffer. Please be generous and show the Galesteo Basin Preserve how much we appreciate its trails

In case you were wondering about liability while on a trail…
by Margaret Alexander

We have decided to post all news and articles to the What’s New tab on the home page.