Hopefully this isn't coming across as me flailing around in unhappiness. I felt that I needed to go all in last weekend to be ready to fix trail. I didn't check the weather because forecasts longer than 5 days just aren't accurate. So I asked Kevin Swenson to move gravel and dirt fill into position this week. He agreed to give us 14 front-end loader scoops of gravel for the asking. This is not a trivial amount of work on his part.
When the 5-day forecast was in I was faced with the very real possibility that we would not be able to use the gravel, which would have been left partially blocking at least one segment of ski/hike trail. In my opinion, this isn't an acceptable outcome. It still may come to pass that the worst of the coming rain will skirt around Blue Mound, but the soil was pretty close to unworkable before the last rain.
The best wet weather option to use a larger group of volunteers is to have them cut brush to open up a trail corridor. With none of my proposals having gained approval, this wasn't an option. Gary and I discussed the possibility of repairing streambed crossings. The problem with this idea is the crossings that need attention the most need more than having a few rocks shuffled around. Without going into too much detail, we have a number of small crossings/dams that are backing up the drainage and making the surrounding trail into gumbo. More digging in mud!
Hopefully the issues with the park's master development plan will be resolved soon. We've had some assurances that things are moving along, but the process is completely closed to us.
Walt
