The September Trail Work Day – Photos of the three projects

Published by Steve Clark on 10/02/2024

The September 28 trail work day took place at the Rancho Potrero Open Space, just south of Dos Vientos, and coincided with National Public Lands Day. Participants were given a one-day pass to federal lands, valid for a whole year! Volunteers worked on three separate projects: reconstructing a drainage lens, building a drain at a low point in the trail, and trimming brush around the parking area. These projects will be described in more detail below along with their separate photo galleries.

COSF’s new cooler TeamConejo volunteer T-shirts also debuted at this event. You can see one in a few of the photos!

Furthest from the parking area, but still only about a 2-minute walk, one group worked on digging out a new drain where water pools in a low spot in the trail. That involved scraping all the grass off the area where the water was to run to, and then digging out the dirt to lower the drainage by a couple of inches so the water would flow off the trail. Finally, the downslope side of the trail had to be dug down below a slight depression that ran along the middle of the trail. You can see the volunteers working on this project in this gallery of photos.

About 50 yards closer to the parking area, another group worked on a drainage lens. A drainage lens is where the trail is raised about 8 to 10 inches to make it higher than the surrounding swampy area. The bottom of the lens is composed of large rocks with gaps between them such that water can flow through the lens from one side to the other. On top of these large rocks are smaller rocks and then decomposed granite to make a smooth trail surface. The problem was that the small rocks and DG had fallen into the gaps between the large rocks, plugging it and so keeping water from being able to cross from one side to the other. This group worked on digging about 15 feet of the lens out, for repair or replacement at a later date. Here are the photos: