Dirt, Sweat, and Beers was a new event for the Sutro Stewards and provided another opportunity to partner with support from REI. For this event, we focused our efforts on the upper section of the East Ridge Trail. Much like our National Trails Day event, we focused on a section of trail that was impacted during last winter’s weather and impacts that caused widening and erosion of the trail. With the days and weeks of fog on Mt. Sutro lately, there is a lot of fog drip (moist air condenses on the tree canopy and drips down to the understory and trails below).
We were relatively lucky with the sun trying to break through in the early morning. The upper segments removed a ton of muck and mud from the trails to expose the existing trail bed. In on of these segments, we were able to narrow and realign the trail to improve drainage and make for a more interesting segment of trail. Lower sections had the hard work of mitigating extensive erosion. This involved embedding logs as retaining features and back-filling to raise the trail tread back to its previous state.
A massive amount of work accomplished in a short workday. We’ll keep a close eye on how these improvements handle the summer fogs and we expect some additional finish work for a future workday.
In addition to the primary effort on the East Ridge, we also had a few volunteers work their way up the North Ridge. During our foggy season, the upper North Ridge in particular sees a lot of fog drip, so doing annual maintenance on drainage features is important to keep the trail in good shape. The habitat crew focused on digging out invasive Himalayan blackberries, and erharta in one of restoration sites at the top of the North Ridge Trail. Another very productive workday up on the hill!
After all the hard work volunteers were rewarded not only with a delicious lunch and Sufferfest beer provided by REI, but also a relaxing lounge with carpets and camping chairs. Thank you REI!
