Young Gulch Trail in the Poudre Canyon suffered two devastating blows in recent years, first the High Park Fire and then the September 2013 flood, making it unusable and closed since 2012. Thanks to the hard work of Forest Service employees and amazing volunteers, we are ready to begin reconstruction.
The Young Gulch Trail is a very popular hiking and biking trail on the Roosevelt National Forest. Reconstruction will help make this trail more resilient to future natural events and help improve the watershed. This reconstruction will take more than one season to finish, but the hope is a lot of great effort will move us towards reopening the trail in 2017 or 2018.
Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, Overland Mountain Bike Club, Poudre Wilderness Volunteers and the Larimer County Conservation Corps are all working with the U.S. Forest Service on this reconstruction project. Wildland Restoration Volunteers applied and was awarded a Great Outdoors Colorado grant to help fund some of this work.
Six public work days are planned for this summer — May 21, June 25, July 30, June 11, June 26 and July 31. Work usually begins at 8 a.m. and is over between 3:30 and 4 p.m. Volunteers must must be 16 years old (if accompanied by an adult) and be ready to get dirty! Register at wlrv.org. Carpooling is encouraged and each event has a forum to help coordinate.
Last year, volunteers dedicated more than 600 hours to restore flood-damaged trails on the Canyon Lakes Ranger District. We could not do all of this great work without our partners and the public’s help.