Mother Nature’s Whimsy Means a Wild Card for Trail Maintenance
By Carl Demrow
I know it is fashionable these days to blame El Nino for everything from crop failure to lousy skiing, but Mother Nature deviates from the game plan every year. If it isn't floods, it's record wind. If it isn't record wind, it's a snowy spring. If it isn't a snowy spring, it will surely be something else. The point is that Mother Nature can be unruly, and whenever she wants to she can make a lot of extra work for a trail crew in a jiffy.
The extra work she generates usually accompanies the following weather "events," as forecasters now like to call them. They used to be called acts of God and include but are not limited to: hurricanes; tornadoes; strong winds; floods, heavy snowfall with rapid melting; ice storms; and heavy, wet snowstorms. Basically, any type of weather that can bring down a lot of trees and wash out trails adds to the gray in a trail crew’s hair.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to be prepared for every huge storm, even if maintenance is kept reasonably up-to-date. We could build drainages the size of tank traps in anticipation of those 100-year floods, but in the end, we have to find a middle ground where we can use our limited money and resources to manage the 10- or 20-year flood, because there is little we can do to prevent damage from the 100-year flood. Sometimes you can only cross your fingers.
Five Battles: Intro | Heavy Use | Erosion Risk | Our Legacy | Mother Nature | Money and Labor
