Success! On Saturday June 5th 2010 180 dedicated volunteers built 1.5 miles of singletrack in just over five hours. That equates to 44 feet of trail for each worker. By the time we walked off the trail just after 2 pm the whole thing was done. With elegant switchbacks, rolling meadows, challenging hills, an engineered rollover, beautiful drainage crossings and jigsaw-like rock bridges, the Budd Trail is another feather in the cap of our outdoors-loving community. This fun extension of Crested Butte's Lower Loop Trail was made possible by collaborations between the Budd family, Charlie McBride, the CB Land Trust, CBMBA, our Forest Service and numerous "git'er done" folks behind the scenes.
[Photo: Trail boss Don Cook sets a stable base for a slick new barbed wire fence crossing called a "rollover". Welded by local trail guru Doug Bradbury, the rollover allows bikes to cross a fenceline without having to stop riding and without letting cows across. It's a huge improvement on the standard rickety stair-step walkover.]
Everyone contributed during the sweltering 80 degree day. Besides the huge CBMBA trail tool quiver, the U.S. Forest Service and the B.L.M both donated scads of tools and many people brought their own (thanks Nancy!) By the time flyingcracker.com showed up at 10 am all the "official" tools had already been claimed, so we grabbed a Round Mountain Organics pickaxe and headed up to section 3 where big rocks needed leveraging. Two hours later after many steel-on-granite collisions our osteoarthritis-afflicted thumb joint and bum knee were making their conditions felt loud and clear. Given the wide range of volunteer ages (5 - 70 yrs old?) we're sure a lot of other workers had their own pain management issues, however not once did we hear a peep of complaint. After seeing a few people navigate the half-finished trail using canes(!) we just decided to man up and keep our aches to ourself.
Many hours of meeting and planning and design (thanks all you heroes!) made this workday possible. Great job everyone! We'll post a GPS track of the new trail as soon as possible.
[Updated June 7th with revised attendance figures and trail length as reported by CBMBA]