Author Archives: Roy Tennant

Overlook Upper Loop Completely Rehabilitated

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Filed under Stewardship, Trail Maintenance
Photo of a before section and an after.

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.

Trail TLC: What it Takes to Care for Sonoma Overlook Trail

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Filed under Stewardship, Trail Maintenance

When you hike the lovely Overlook Trail, winding your way up to a magnificent view over the town and southern Sonoma Valley, you can be forgiven if you don’t give a single thought to what it takes to keep it easy to either hike or run. Few do.

Roy Tennant, SOT Maintenance Chair

But that’s my job, as the Maintenance Chair. The other Overlook Stewards know that I spend many a waking moment thinking about what needs to be done next (don’t worry, I won’t drag you into my dreams). Here are some of the jobs we frequent, although some of them are purely seasonal:

  • Cut back poison oak. 🍂  You’re welcome.
  • Trim brush from the trail corridor.
  • Mow overgrown grasses.
  • Remove rocks from the trailbed.
  • Pick up trash (almost daily).
  • Remove invasive species; we eradicated Yellow star-thistle recently–so far our only win.
  • Trim and shape the trail to allow water to flow off.
  • Completely rehabilitate sections of trail (i.e., remove rocks and regain a trail outslope so that rainfall or seepage flows immediately off the trail and doesn’t pool there).
  • Create drains where it isn’t possible to create adequate trail outslope.
  • Remove downed tree limbs and trees.
  • Sweep rocks and aggregate off the stairs and back into place to increase stair lifespan.
  • Create and maintain trailhead kiosk information and trail signage.
  • Create engineering plans for major trail rehabilitation projects.
  • Collaborate and contract with specialized trail construction teams, including monitoring of their work.
  • Solicit, write and secure grants to support major trail rehabilitation projects.
  • Scout and report homeless encampments, which can create a fire hazard.
  • Enforce trail rules (most prominently: no dogs allowed on the Overlook or Montini).
  • Communicate with our supporters through our website/blog and our newsletter.
  • Raise money to do everything listed above and more.

Yes, it is a lot of jobs, so we’re always looking for more people to join us in performing them. Let us know if you’re interested! All welcome; you can select the particular ways in which you would like to help.

The Upper Loop Project, Part 1

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Filed under Stewardship, Trail Maintenance

Before

For about 22 years, water created a ditch on the upper part of the Upper Loop of the Sonoma Overlook Trail and sent a creek down a “climbing turn” above the bench at the top of the trail, eroding it down to expose big rocks that are now well above the trail bed (see photo). Perhaps you know of it. Over the years, it became a complete mess. A shit-show, actually. I would hate to know what hikers and runners thought about it. I hated it. 

For years, I pondered what to do about it; then eventually, it hit me. I would break down the central rocks and simply take the trail straight up the center. But first I needed to deal with the drainage leading up to it, which was a real problem. This is because the water was flowing straight down the trail. Continue reading →

Our Current Overlook Trail Renewal Campaign

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Filed under Stewardship, Trail Maintenance

If you’ve been reading our posts here for any length of time, you know that I’m somewhat obsessed with trail smoothing. That is, removing rocks from the trail so that hikers, and more importantly, runners, don’t trip (I’ve take a few bad falls while running myself, so this is quite personal). But it’s also more than that. 

The badly ditched trail

We also very much need to regain control of water on the trail, which means removing ditching and regaining ,at minimum, a 5-degree outslope on the tread. So I’ve been on a campaign to do just that, and recently I’ve become enabled to take this campaign to the very top of the trail.

Two key things recently happened to make this possible:

  1. The City of Sonoma bought and delivered a pile of aggregate (Mayacama Red Pathway Fines Only, to be specific) to the top of the trail, going through a neighboring vineyard property with their very appreciated cooperation (thank you, Dan and Andrea Son!).
  2. In cooperation with the same vineyard property as well as City of Sonoma Public Works  (thank you Terence Erickson!), who kindly donated a 120-gallon water tank that was subsequently filled by the vineyard property staff, we now have everything we need to get serious about fixing the entire Upper Loop of the Sonoma Overlook Trail.

Continue reading →

The Great Wall of Montini

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Filed under Stewardship, Trail Maintenance

Recently, we’ve been redoubling our volunteer maintenance efforts at the Montini Preserve by instituting a monthly trail work day in association with staff from Sugarloaf Ridge State Park and Sonoma Ecology Center.

One of the jobs we wanted to tackle early on was a particularly sketchy spot that had narrowed from a rock falling out of the trail. This was just above a steep hill that if someone fell, they could really get hurt. On the first work day the team determined a wall, or more accurately a buttress, would need to be built up from some distance below the trail to support the trail and enable us to widen it safely. Continue reading →