CATS Trail Project Reports

I need a weather watcher for the project areas. At 230pm it was raining cats and dogs with 27mph winds at my house which is only about 3 miles from the worksite. I decided to wait it out by watching the National Geographic channel about Argentina. About 330 or so I get a call from Scott – “Where are you?” “ I am at home – why?” “We are all here waiting for you”. What?    There was no rain over there. Obviously, I was late but the gang started to show up and we turned a rain event into a work event. More of the same trail building and sadly watching the lake draw up. We are at the half way point and it is full steam ahead! We just got to keep going on strong to get this baby done and out of the sun. Lots of good conversations as we work and jump frog over each other. Then the night comes and we are tired and retire to the Wapiti for food and a drink. Members:     Navy Bob, Connie, Dean, Leigh, Andy, Scott, Nick, Brandon      ...

Absolutely! Seven of us got there in the heat of the day again and whacked in some good flat basic trail. No so fun, but great time as the weather was outstanding again - cool breeze off the lake, cloud cover and temps dropped considerably. Actually, I considered the working temperature and conditions perfect for trail building. As so it is we whack trail in most conditions. Though I am here to say (in a separate email soon) that temps over 90+ at  3pm  on our work evenings are going to be delayed by one hour to  4 pm  to get past the hottest part of the day. Four pm is about the hottest around here, but we can work into it better I reckon. So without me going out with an email blast at the last minute – remember to come later by one hour if the temperature is hotter than 90° F…. No skitos and lots of teeny tiny toads all over the place in the mud flats caused by the lake pulling back its shoreline. Seems the lake is getting some water pulled out. No worries – we ...

Members of CATS officially started whacking trail at Lake Bodecker Loveland this evening and it was hot. We decided to work close to the swamp early before the skitos decided to come out and find us. There was a mild breeze and distant thunderstorms that kept the event workable. Though the storms came up on us and actually passed right overhead, we kept working. Cutting in a three foot trail in established field grass is rather tough work. We can all attest to that! Once we got the rhythm of trail cutting, the crew started busting out trail and playing jump frog. Kathleen was everywhere with the camera and snapped some delightful photos. Cutting out flat trail is not the most exciting trail experience but having so many pleasant members around makes it fun and productive. We took an evening break (called in by Connie) at the lake under the cliff side. There was some shade there and a bit of a slight wind off the lake. This new trail will be over a half mile in length and provide the ...

Yes indeed and what a night! Hot and sunny but that did not stop us and the Capitols were playing for the Stanley Cup and that did not stop us. We just finished another quick  trail over at Rossum Drive and now we returned to our first project of the year and finished it. Many thanks to all those that came out this night and to all the others that touched this trail system. Well done! So, we arrived there at  3 pm  and collected our early birds – Kathleen, Leigh, Dean, Lynn and mosey down to the tie in pieces we needed to connect at the western end. We moved all the remaining stone into place and also moved in wheel barrows of crush on the culvert area. Looks so nice and done in about two hours and then we had others arrive and we moved the whole large crew down to the east end. Bob redesigned the trail a bit and everyone got to work on it. We even had a quick little causeway to build in the ditch. We had lots of corridor clearing for the remaining six foot trail an...

Yikes – the day is finally here. National Trails Day with the City of Loveland on a project to line the new trail with crusher fines. Our two nights of prep helped out a lot as we (CATS) organized ourselves for a quick four hours of intense work. Most our CATS members got there before 8 am or so and had time to check out the displays, sign in, and walk the trail. We found some spots that were short on crush and were making arrangements for transfer from stronger piles of crush. Fortunately, COL had a dump truck load waiting on the side which saved the day. COL also delivered another final load of stone for our last causeway and brother did we love that pile of stone. In fact, it caused us to rebuild the entire causeway (did I use cause twice?). No worries as there were CATS members already working this baby and the new stone was huge and awesome. We needed the height for this particular causeway as it is set in a depression under biodegradable fill and the construction was set to highe...