By John Roberts BTCEB Director at Large
BTCEB led over 400 volunteer hours doing trailwork at Joaquin Miller Park in 2021. This was primarily hard work such as moving earth for erosion control, and removing deadfallen trees and major brush off the trail.
Notable contributors were the Piedmont and Oakland youth mountain biking teams, and professional coach Ian Massey. I have a list with the names of 85 of the 90 volunteers that made this possible. The unknown five mountain bikers are pictured above. This father and two sons were riding and helped me upon request, together with another unrelated biking pair, back on November 7th.
Volunteer work brings out the best in people, as you can tell from their smiles. From the first photo at the beginning of this article note that the dad is standing on the remaining log after the rest of that large tree was removed off of the Chaparral Trail. It was getting late and I never took down their names. Similarly, I have received serendipitous help from three other father-son teams that helped remove trees over the past two years.
And good samaritan volunteers abound. It is amazing how helpful mountain bikers can be, and what a great bonding activity biking can become. More importantly, we can do more together than we can do separately.
Removing one of the largest deadfallen trees of 2021 took a total of nine hours. Three volunteers took three hours each and a portion of that tree is still sticking out on Sequoia Bayview Trail at the north trailhead of Big Trees Trail.
This tree was blocking two trails and was forked so will require more work if it is to be completely removed. Maybe in the summer once the soil dries and drainage becomes less if a priority? To the 90 volunteers I have on my list, and to the unknown volunteers that helped improve the quality of JMP trails, all of us thank you!
