Fixing A Perennial Sore Spot in Greenhorn!

As you can imagine, trails through meadows are notorious for being hard to manage and maintain. They tend to be in wetter areas and have few opportunities to drain water off the trail. In the spring we often see this result in puddles and wet areas in the flat sections of our trails. These wet areas can become even more of an issue if there are seeps in that area.

Here in the Wood River Valley, one of these difficult spots is along the main Greenhorn Trail in Greenhorn Gulch. Located in the valley bottom, this trail follows and crosses the creek multiple times, and at one particular crossing, it comes right across a seep.

Water is constantly seeping (or even flowing!) through this section of trail, resulting in people riding around it, causing trail braiding, or in total blow-outs like we saw in other areas this spring during high water.

This has been an ongoing issue in this section of the trail but with our new BYOC program we were able to tackle this bigger project. Between Windermere Sun Valley bringing their crew out for a work day, and combined with a staff work day, we managed to armor this section of trail.

We used rocks topped with some soil to bring the trail back up to ground level. These rocks will not only eliminate the trail cupping (aka keep it from turning into a ditch) but will also work as a ‘French Drain’ and allow water to disperse underneath the tread.

The top layers of dirt should stay dry and stabilize as it gets worn in with traffic. So go for a walk or ride out Greenhorn and help pack in this new section of trail!