On Sunday, June 27th, members and friends of the SMMTF trail crew held a gathering at the home of Mary Ann Webster to mark the end of the crew’s traditional work season.
During the festivities, we honored longtime volunteer Bill Pitts with the Trail Worker of the Year Award, for which he took home a collection of kudos, and a shiny new pick mattock. Bill has been a dedicated crew member for more than 30 years, beginning with helping to build the Hondo Canyon Trail.
The photographs above and below show Bill with Ron Webster during a 1997 trail project, and working with Russ Marshall and Mary Ann Webster in Hondo Canyon not long before the new trail’s completion in 1993. As you can see, Bill has no qualms about the possibility of getting a bit muddy in the process of trail building!
Since its inception in 1978 to help build the Musch Trail at Trippet Ranch, the trail crew has been blessed with decades of dedicated volunteer work. Little slows them down — even, it would seem, a pandemic.
Working directly for California State Parks as an organized collective of independent volunteers, members of our crew still managed to log more than 1,100 hours of trail maintenance between September 2020 and June 2021. This is easily comparable to — and even surpasses — the Sierra Club crew’s previous years. In those months, these volunteers worked heavily on Rivas Canyon Trail and the Beehive Trail, as well as Saddle Peak, Garapito, Viewridge and others.
Recently, we received this heartening note from Jason Finlay, California State Parks Angeles District Trails Coordinator:
“Last Friday I stopped by Rivas Canyon Trail. Two enthusiastic hikers stopped me to let me know how much they appreciated the work that was done and to say how great the trail looks. Evidently they hike there two or three times a week and said it’s the best it has looked in years. They were also very happy that Sierra Club was active in trail maintenance as they were long time donors and supporters! Thank you for the great work!”
Indeed, we want to extend a massive THANK YOU to all the volunteers who dedicate their time and energy to caring for our parks and trails.