Bay State Trail Riders Association (BSTRA) held its 22nd annual trail work day at West Hill Dam in Uxbridge MA.
Our partnership with the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) started in 1993 to start improving the Woodland Trail that is open to hikers, horseback riders and mountain bikers. This partnership ensures that the trails stay in good shape without taxing the personnel at ACE as recreation is not the main mandate of the ACE. Their main mandate is flood control.
In the 22 years that we have been doing this trail work day, this is the first time we still had snow on the ground. That made it pretty interesting to try and clean out the water bars that were still under snow. But the shovels came in handy, we dug out the snow and then cleaned out the water bars.
In case anyone doesn’t know, water bars are used to divert water, coming down a hill, off of the trail. This stops the flow of water continuing down the trail which will lead to erosion. When we first started, there was a section of trail at the bottom of a very long downhill run where we had a 2 ½ foot deep washed out gully.
We had nine BSTRA members (Barbara McCumber, Suzanne Nicholas, Karen Parlin, Becky Kalagher, Mary McManus, Sue Perry, Gloria Duhaime, Sue Quirk, Bill Knott, and Annamaria Paul) join us along with Viola and Drew with the ACE. We cleaned out the water bars, cleaned up winter debris, did some trimming back and picked up trash. All totaled we put in 25.5 hours for our mornings work.
We hope everyone has a chance to get out and enjoy the trails at West Hill Dam and to appreciate the work that goes into keeping those trails open for all to use. Respect our resources and take your trash with you.
