Prickly Pear Land Trust is hard at work on its most ambitious trail maintenance project to date.
The project seeks to tackle roughly 12 miles of Forest Service trails that have gone unmaintained for years as beetle-killed trees have piled up, causing hazards for users and making some trails impassable.
Montana Conservation Corps sawyer Madeline Braxton cuts a beetle-killed tree from the Switchback Ridge trail near Rimini last week.
The U.S. Forest Service approached PPLT with Great American Outdoors Act funding asking if the organization could muster the workforce needed to help clear some of the deferred maintenance backlog on trails around Helena.
In order to accomplish the work, PPLT is coordinating with the Montana Conservation Corps to make use of their sawyers.
“It’s basically the first significant maintenance on some of these trails since the beetle kill over a decade ago,” Nate Kopp, program and trail director for PPLT, said.
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They are in year one of potentially four years of work. Kopp says they are optimistic they will not need the four allotted years for the work.
This year’s work will be the most intense and is focused on about 4 miles of the Switchback Ridge trail connecting to the Continental Divide.
“It’s a relatively popular trail and coinciding with the Forest Service’s work on the CDT, next year this should be open for business in a way,” Kopp said. “Free and clear of trees in a way that it hasn’t been in a decade-plus. So we’re pretty excited about it.”
“I mean, this trail was essentially closed, you know, outside of, you know, a corridor that could handle, you know, the width of your backpack or the width of your handlebars. There wasn’t much beyond that,” he said. “And so this really opens it up. It’ll also serve as a fire break. If, you know, God forbid, a fire does take place, it’ll be used by the first responders up here to help set that line.”
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