The majority of the meeting was relatively frustrating for me. It lacked in productivity and I felt like we were being talked down to like we were 12. "Who likes to hike, m'kay?" I'm not joking. He regularly said, "m'kay." At one point, he dramatically pulled down 5 or 6 pieces of chart paper and asked for 10 volunteers to come up front. He had the 10 volunteers stand on the 5-6 pieces of paper so they were kinda tight together. Then he said that, according to studies that they've done for the past two years, 4 of these people would be mountain bikers, 5-6 would be pedestrians and 1 (or less than 1) would be an equestrian. Then the people sat down and the paper was thrown away. Every single person there, save one teenage daughter there with her mom, was easily over 30 and I'm sure very well capable of understanding percentages without the demo. But that's how the first hour or so went- Kim giving "instruction" and explanation for trail terminology and such. But instead of just saying "when marking for new trails, JeffCo always flags the hinge-point (the inside edge of the trail), he told us about how 4-5 other agencies also do it, and asked people to participate and answer "why do you think it's important to be on the same page when flagging a trail?" Seriously? Just tell us how you want it done. 10 seconds. Move on.
Anyway, after an hour plus of relatively useless information that could've been covered in 10 minutes, we got into some more interesting information.
Dave and Eric are both "Trail Services Team Leads" and are two of the head trail builders for JeffCo. They're the guys out there blowing up rocks when needed and running the trail crews, etc. Dave was a HUGE breath of fresh air. I had a chance to speak with him for a while during the break (funny, but he knew who I was even though we've never met). When I asked him why PnS and Grubstake can't be open now and why it hasn't been open, he basically said he was frustrated by it to, but the decision was "above [his] pay grade."
So, on to the salient points:
Starting next week, they are going to be doing weekly "Trail Trainings" for the next two months. These will be field-based, limited to 6 participants (unless they can get more staff) and will be sign-ups through Eventbrite:
Jefferson County Open Space on Eventbrite.
The Trail Trainings are different from regular project days in that they are designed to help people learn and get better at specific trail building skills and aspects. Their goal is to grow the "mini-crew" concept and be able to lean on volunteers who do some Trail Trainings to eventually lead Mini-Crews and/or be more self-directed during regular project days ("Bill, why don't you take these 6 people and go work on the rock reinforcement on the new switchback after Argos"). They intend to also get quite a bit of work done on these days, but not as much as would get done on a regular project day. Again, the hope is that people will gain enough skills and training to be more self-directed in the future- possibly leading ad-hoc mini-crews.
Despite the recent work at NTM, they assured everyone that their first priority is Apex and, secondly, White Ranch.
Apex specific:
Same schedule as before: Phase 1 (PnS/ Grubstake) by March 31st, Phase 2 (upper Sluicebox/ Hardscrabble/ Upper Apex [to create through traffic to Lookout Mtn Rd]) by June 30th, Phase 3 (Apex proper and Enchanted) by September 30th.
Why has it not been opened yet? Because of some bullshit. People being overwhelmed, easy to shut it down while getting "low-hanging fruit" in other areas, vacations over x-mas break, etc- plenty of excuses, none of them good reasons. But, all in the past, so not **** to do about it.
Why can't it be opened now? They just got the conceptual drawing from the engineers/ planners/ designers in it's final form (pic posted above) on Tuesday. They take it to the board/ county/ city on Monday to present it for a permit. Permit can be 8-10 days at the fastest, but can be drawn out for various reasons (just like any kind of building permit). They are hoping for the 8-10 day thing and feel the board is eager to get this going as well. But, even without permitting, they are planning on beginning to back-fill the existing trail starting in about a week (by Feb 1st) if weather cooperates. They can begin that work without a permit.
Yes- it will be more like Hardscrabble and Centennial Cone, and will not be the PnS we have all come to love (and hate) (and love) (and love). The 10-15% grade thing is interesting. In the map above, everywhere there is a yellow highlighted area, the trail is 15% or more. Even though much of that trail has been able to stay somewhat stable over the many years, after the 1000 year flood, they are saying the entire hydraulic profile of the entire mountain has changed- places that used to have minor washout concerns used to have a lot of trees and brush and layers and layers of debris and soil and other things that helped naturally filter and dilute runoff in a normal rain shower. Those same areas are now drainages that are exposed bedrock above and below the trail and even a minor rain storm is going to cause significantly more damage and erosion than ever before. This made some sense to me. Even though the trail seems fine, the mountain around it has changed. Not happy about it, but, like I said, it made some sense.
While only Phase 1 is open, they are considering alternating days or other schedules for management reasons- plan to be released by end of February.
I didn't get the impression that they're going to make any changes to Enchanted or the Apex Gut other than the necessary repairs- but when asked about it, the response was something like, "No. Not yet."
Other tidbits: IMBA/ COMBA are working with JCOS to build a mountain bike only trail system at Mt. Glen (I don't know where that is).
There is more work from Flood Recovery than can be done in one year at their normal staffing levels. They are putting in for 3 FT "Term" staff (1 year contract) to help with the Flood Relief efforts. They are hopeful they will get the funding to support this in the next couple of weeks. They are also hoping to increase volunteer efforts by more than 25%. With both of those factors, they hope to finish flood relief efforts this year.
The next project that was slotted to be completed this year, but is now set back until flood recovery is done, is a 6 mile connector between White Ranch and Golden Gate.
I think that's it.