Before (in the rear), and after (in the foreground).

Back in August 2025 the trail maintenance crew of the Sonoma Overlook Trail began a project to completely rehabilitate the Upper Loop of the trail. For those familiar with the trail, you likely know what this meant. Roughly half of the Upper Loop was deeply (at least 6 inches) entrenched and eroded, while all the lower half and some of the upper half was very rocky.

In mid-September 2025 we collaborated with Terence Erickson with the City of Sonoma Public Works and Dan Son, the caretaker of an adjoining property, to have a City dump truck deliver a load of aggregate to the top of the trail. Terence also found us a 120-gallon water tank we could install nearby, and Don Son agreed to fill it as we needed. That meant we were totally supplied to essentially completely rebuild the upper loop. We were off to the races.

Rehabbing the upper part meant mostly cutting down the lower edge of the trail (berm) and throwing it and more dirt into the trail to regain an appropriate out slope. Once we regained a good slope, we covered it with a layer of Mayacama Red (Pathway Fines Only) aggregate from the Mark West Bodean Quarry that the SOT Chair specified that the City purchase for our use. In our experience, once you water this aggregate very well and pack it down, it tends to harden up almost like concrete.

The lower half of the upper loop was much more difficult, since it was extremely rocky, with a fair amount of bedrock that required a lot of chipping with our cordless rock chisel (see the before and after photo). But we also completely removed many rocks with a rock hammer, rock bar, and the rock chisel. If you look just below the trail, you can see many of those rocks. We also cut berm back up onto the trail as well as gathered soil from around the property to regain a good out slope and finally covered it over with the aggregate. To do the lower half required another dump truck load of aggregate as well as refilling our water tank, which was performed with alacrity by our appreciated collaborators.

As of today, all the major work has been completed. There are only a couple mopping up operations left.

With this project we’ve demonstrated that our all-volunteer crew can completely rehabilitate (essentially rebuild) the trail. We are now off to other projects, until we have the trail to the point where only minor maintenance will be required to keep it very hikeable and runnable.

We hope you enjoy it.