Category Archives: Land Maintenance

Lace up your Hoka’s: The upper loop is open! 🥾🥾

Posted
Filed under Land Maintenance, Trail Maintenance

Yes, the rumors are true: the upper section of the Overlook Trail is open!

The entire trail bed rehabilitation has been completed right on time, conducted over 11 weeks by nonprofit organization American Conservation Experience (ACE) in partnership with the Sonoma Overlook Trail Stewards and the City of Sonoma.  Additional steps, rock walls and drainage features have been installed to protect the integrity of the trail and to make the way more sustainable, walkable and enjoyable.  These improvements should last for decades and make our jobs as Overlook Stewards much easier.

We want to thank those of you who donated to this cause and those who had the patience and thoughtfulness to stay off of the trail whilst the ACE team did their intensive work; we know it wasn’t easy.  😜  We also thank Sonoma Police Department for helping us keep the work zone safe and clear.

Welcome back, Sonoma.  The Overlook awaits.

Before and after:
Trail Smoothing

Trail rehab update: A little peek to whet your appetite for what’s to come…!

Posted
Filed under Land Maintenance, Trail Maintenance
Trail Construction

Building a rock border to prevent “trail creep”

Our current trail rehab project is well underway! The specialized crew we’ve brought in to undertake this endeavor, American Conservation Experience (ACE), is hard into the second “hitch” or work segment of the project, which is scheduled to wrap up on May 21. These improvements are designed to last beyond our lifetimes and will help ameliorate the rougher bits of SOT’s upper trail section.

The first hitch went pretty well, save the need to navigate a bit of poison oak and a quick visit from a rattler.  Morale is good and the crew assigned to this project are determined, mighty and enthusiastic.

Continue reading →

The Art and Science of Stewardship

Posted
Filed under Land Maintenance, Stewardship, Trail Maintenance

Being a volunteer Sonoma Overlook Trail steward is potentially a very diverse job. It may include arranging and managing fundraising events, organizing weekly hikes, developing, producing, and installing signs and interpretational materials, cutting water bars (ruts to direct water off the trail), writing grants to get funds to re-route and rebuild the trail, pulling invasive species, cutting branches intruding on the trail, or who knows what else. Let’s just say it’s a diverse set of potential responsibilities, and no single steward does them all. We tend to specialize.

Secret Ranger cutting branches with our newly-acquired pole saw.

Thankfully, we have quite a large group of stewards of the Sonoma Overlook Trail, so we have people who bring all of these skills and more to our local trail system. We don’t all swing into action at the same moment; it may be quiet for a while and then a steward or three might step up when their particular skills and talents are needed. We all have something to give.

On this particular day, a steward who calls herself “Secret Ranger,” and who is our current Chair, brought out our recently purchased pole saw to cut some limbs off a low-hanging tree branch to make sure people can safely pass underneath it. On this same trip, we also visited the Montini Preserve to perform the same kind of operation—cutting branches to lessen the weight on an overhanging branch. In the case of the branch on Montini, we saw an immediate result of the branch lifting 4-6 inches right away, and likely more to come as the branch continues to adjust. This is enough to allow those who are 6 feet or under to pass without trouble, and likely some even taller folk. It made a clear difference, without removing the rather large branch entirely (it is easily 14-15 inches in diameter).

These are just some of the jobs volunteer trail stewards do, almost every day.

Coming in Hot

Posted
Filed under Invasive Species, Land Maintenance, Seasons, Stewardship, Summer, Yellow Star Thistle

You guessed it, yet another invasive species post. You can check out right now if this doesn’t appeal. I would be the last person to fault you for it. For those of us who do it, we recognize it as the obsession that it is. We don’t expect anyone else to be so afflicted Like, EVER.

If you’re still here, this is what’s happening. I’m laser-focused on pulling all of the Yellow Starthistle I can possibly find, as it is blooming now, and racing into seed. And yet we have a window of opportunity to make a serious dent in it this season. We are down to just some areas along Norrbom Road, and after hitting it hard last year, the impact is very evident. I’m finding much less than last year in these areas. 

This affords us the opportunity, for the first time ever, of potentially pulling every single plant we see. 

That’s why I’m fired up, and going out there every day I can, and pulling every single plant that I can, no matter how small. Because that’s how you reach your goal. Because that’s what it takes to completely eradicate an invasive species from 200 acres of public lands.

If you can’t do what’s required to come in hot, then you have no business taking this on in the first place. Just trust me on that.

Major Milestone Reached in Invasive Species Removal

Posted
Filed under Invasive Species, Italian Thistle, Land Maintenance, Plant Life, Stewardship

The weapon of choice, with a pile of vanquished foes in the background.

I am very happy to announce that after years of work, and over three months of constant and focused effort this season, we have reached a major milestone in our fight against invasive species. For the first time ever, we have pushed the Italian thistle back away from all of the named trails on both the Sonoma Overlook Trail property and the Montini Preserve.

I am not making this declaration without first traversing all of the named trails (close to 5 miles of them) and inspecting them closely every step of the way. It doesn’t mean that I haven’t missed a plant or three, but it means that if I’ve missed something it wasn’t for a lack of trying. [To be clear, as of this writing the trails are closed, but I have official permission to only do maintenance work on the trails.]

This was our first goal for this season, and the fact that we were finally able to accomplish it is an indication that the situation along the trail is improving. Many areas (primarily on the Overlook, where much of our past efforts have focused) were much easier to clear this year than last year. But of course a great deal of work remains.

That continuing work will now focus on complete eradication in areas where it seems possible, preventing further spread, and tightening the noose on large infestations. We may also experiment with covering dense clumps with plastic and letting the sun do our job for us.

Those of you who would like some background on this decades-long battle can read our past posts “Why We Fight,” and “‘Don’t Look Up’ and Other Lessons from Invasive Species Removal.” Or perhaps you shouldn’t. Yeah, that’s the ticket, probably better to read a novel, now that I think about it. Or literally anything else.