Their blog post (
http://lagunacanyon.org/2017/02/3387/) sheds some light on the decision making process that lead to this as well as the planning, both of which went back to 2014. I wish some of us had been aware of it back then and involved when it might have been able to make a difference (which is a good lesson for us going forward, and hopefully something that this dialogue can help facilitate).
I still question a couple of the statements made about the rationale given in their blog. The writer (Alan) states that the trail had grown to a "40-foot-wide rock-choked gully". From my memory and the pictures at the beginning of this thread, I can't think of anywhere in that upper section that approached 40' wide. I agree that it was no longer a narrow singletrack, but I would not have estimated it to be even as wide as a typical fire road in LCWP. I'm not trying to be nit-picky about the trail width, I only highlight this because I can see a much stronger argument to say a 40' wide trail is out of control compared to one that is at most as wide as a fire road. I also question the added benefit they cite of being able to ride up TnA with the more gradual grade of the reroute. I could be in the minority on this, but there are some trails like TnA, Car Wreck, 5 Oaks, etc. that I would never dream of riding up. I'm also hoping that this doesn't imply that they are going to sanitize the lower section of TnA to make it climbable.
I'm not looking to escalate tensions on this. I only post this to give my perspective and hear from others as we learn more about it and how we can be better involved going forward. I look forward to hearing what comes out of the discussions with Hallie.
Here ya go:
"Laguna Ridge Trail, also known as T&A, started out life as a ranch road. For many years, this trail was a favorite of the small cadre of Laguna Beach mountain bikers, and despite its steep, fall-line alignment, it stayed a stable, narrow singletrack for over a decade through the 1980s and early 1990s.
Starting with the wildfires in 1993 and culminating with the El Nino rains in 2010, a series of natural events and a dramatic increase in users began causing erosion problems along the trail. For those of you who have been riding since then, you’ve seen the trail change from a primitive, narrow singletrack to a 40-foot-wide rock-choked gully. For years up until the present day, these sections continued to widen as most trail users avoided the jumbled centerline and stayed on the margins, damaging the fragile native vegetation and further eroding the trailbed. If nothing was done, this damage would have continued to degrade both the trail itself and the surrounding habitat, possibly resulting in a complete closure of the entire trail.
OC Parks and Laguna Canyon Foundation, working together to assess trails in the wilderness parks, identified Laguna Ridge as a top priority, and concluded that the first step in saving this trail would be to reroute the top section off of the fall-line to create a longer and more gradual grade. This would render the trail more sustainable and have the added benefit of being rideable uphill as well as down. LCF Staff worked closely with OC Parks in 2014 to design a reroute that would strike a balance between protecting the surrounding sensitive habitat and maximizing the user experience and long-term trail sustainability.
LCF volunteer crews and staff worked tirelessly through the 2015-2016 season to build the 0.3-mile reroute, only to have a wildfire burn through the area in June 2016, resulting in the closure of the trail. We stabilized the new alignment by installing erosion control measures and placing brush to prevent users from shortcutting through the burned areas. Once this work was accomplished, the trail was reopened in October 2016.
Last month (January 2017), OC Parks brought in a contractor to begin the decommissioning of the original trail alignment. The contractor used heavy equipment to break up the compacted trailbed, recontour the channelized slopes, and divert water from the old alignment to prevent further erosion. While using a backhoe to tear up a rocky slope in a wilderness park may seem extreme, it is the only practical way of addressing the scale of the damage that has been caused to this area over the life of this trail.
LCF will soon begin work with the Orange County Conservation Corps to plant and seed this area with native plants in order to restore the impacted area to healthy native habitat as required by OC Parks’ conservation mandate. We will also be working in the burned area to help protect it as it heals from the fire. We will continue to work with our dedicated trail volunteers and OC Parks to improve and maintain this trail and the rest of our trail system so that it can withstand the increasingly heavy use it receives while minimizing impacts to the surrounding habitat.
There is a lot of work to do, and we always welcome your involvement. Join us one of our upcoming trail volunteer days by emailing us at
alan@lagunacanyon.org."
That's interesting and helpful to know that this was OC Parks' decision once the reroute was complete. I'm curious why the reroute was needed in the first place, and if OC Parks and/or LCF discussed just sticking with the original trail. Keep us posted on your discussion tonight, and let us know if there's anything we can do to help.
