Maintenance Team members Kurt Teuber, Priscilla Miles, and John Donnelly with the refurbished section of trail.

Every month on the first Monday, the Sonoma Overlook Trail (SOT) Maintenance Team has a standing workday. Sometimes we do “rock patrol” where we remove rocks sticking up in the trail and fill in the holes, sometimes we pull invasive thistle and cut back poison oak, and other times we engage in more traditional trail maintenance activities, like we did today.

Today a team of four stewards on the Maintenance Team worked to shore up a section of trail that was in danger of falling away, and spread gravel to create an outslope that encourages “sheet flow” of water directly off the trail when it rains. This project was assisted by the remnants of rock and gravel left behind by the American Conservation Experience (ACE) crew who recently worked on three sections of trail to make them easier to traverse and more sustainable.

After the ACE work had been completed, volunteer stewards Bill Wilson, Fred Allebach (both of whom were instrumental in getting the ACE work completed) and I walked the renovated sections of trail and identified the portion of trail we worked on today as needing work. With four of us working, and the materials we needed close at hand, it only took us an hour and a half to complete the job.