Colorado Trail maintenance crews

By Tom Brooksher

In the past five years I’ve spent more than forty days sleeping in a tent, getting up at the cold crack of dawn, digging on dusty mountain sides, eating lunch out of a paper bag while fighting to keep from sliding down a steep mountainside, struggling to move rocks that sometimes outweighed me, braving afternoon thunderstorms, and returning home exhausted to the bone… all while working on volunteer trail maintenance crews for the Colorado Trail Foundation.

As someone who’s reasonably sane and who spends most of the rest of his days sitting at a desk or on an airplane, one might be left to wonder why I would voluntarily choose to invest so much precious time getting so dirty and tired helping maintain the five hundred-mile-long trail that runs from Denver to Durango, Colorado.

As the temperature drops and much of the Colorado Trail lies too deep beneath snow to hike, it seems like a good time to reassess that question. Following are the top ten reasons a somewhat normal forty-nine year-old professional person loves to do trail maintenance work on the Colorado Trail.

10. Rolly Rogers and Laura Farmer  Colorado Trail crews can be habit forming. Rolly, a retired geologist from the Denver area, and Laura, a well-traveled farm wife from the western slope, are representative of the dozens of wonderful people who come back summer after summer to make the trail better. They’ve each participated in more than twenty crews, and I’ve had the privilege of sharing camp with them for nearly all of the crews I’ve done. Like so many CT crew workers, they’re just good folk.

9. Thrift Shopping  Week-long crews take Wednesday off to rest, recuperate, and have fun. If you’re on a crew with Sue Palmer, the Kitchen Princess, chances are part of your Wednesday will be spent in a thrift shop. In case you’re like me, you may not have realized that most mountain towns have a thrift shop filled with a combination of practical and goofy things. Sue, who has done a magnificent job of managing the food on all five week-long crews I’ve participated in, is a thrift shop connoisseur. On Wednesdays, she leads a group of newbie thrift shoppers and shows them how to have twenty dollars worth of fun for fifty cents.

8. Dan Russell  If you’re getting tired, sore, and developing blisters, why not invite a friend? It took three years, but I finally convinced my friend Dan to come along for a week on the trail. Now he’s hooked, too. We’ve done two week-long crews together and one weekend crew. It’s a great way to spend time with a friend, and in our case, to make some music together around the campfire. Dan is an accomplished jazz and blues sax player, and I play guitar. In the evenings we keep ourselves well-entertained around the campfire, and try not to irritate the rest of the crew—at least with our music.

7. A 700´ Re-route Near North Cottonwood Creek  Our crew leader, Stan Ward, led us to a spot where erosion had turned the trail into a boulder field. Then he pointed at the brush and tree covered hillside next to it and announced that we were going to re-route the trail across the hillside to get it off the boulders. Seemed a little far fetched to me, but we dove in and after felling a dozen trees, tearing out dense thicket and decaying logs, installing two switchbacks, a long retaining wall and multiple rolling dips, we had ourselves a trail to be proud of. There’s something especially satisfying about walking on a new or renovated section of trail and knowing that some of your sweat is in the tread.

6. Sally Stone  She lives four states away. She’s well into her seventies. Her husband isn’t an outdoorsman, so she comes alone. And she has a heart of gold. We met Sally on our very first crew in 1999. She immediately took to my then fifteen-year-old son, Andy. They talked and laughed. She taught him to play bridge by lantern light in the crew tent. He taught her to play a card game called, “Kings and Gravel Suckers.” After a wonderful week together we parted, never expecting to see Sally again. In 2003, now twenty years old, Andy was reunited on the summer crew with Sally. Their grandmother-grandson relationship was immediately renewed. In addition to many special memories, Andy has seen first-hand that retirement can mean new friends and new experiences.

5. Opera and Chair Dances  What can you do around a campfire besides make s’mores and sing “Kum-ba-ya? How about a talent show? On several crews we’ve reserved one night as talent show night and opened the stage (OK, the dusty spot in front of the crew tent) to whatever talent our crew members had, or think they had. We’ve been entertained by comic monologues, stories about local history, hacky sacking, Broadway songs with made-up lyrics about trail work, and my two favorites: opera and chair dances. The opera came from a very shy young lady who was hiking the entire 500-mile Colorado Trail with a small group of friends. They happened on our camp in the late afternoon so we invited them to dine with us and stay for the talent show. After a great deal of coaxing from her friends, the young lady rose and sang the most melodic yet powerful aria ever performed under the stars on the Colorado Trail. Chair dancing is a rare art form invented by my sixteen-year-old son, Kyle. It’s a sort of one-man lawn chair drill team in constant motion. With an upbeat tune in the background (Django Rhinehart’s music is his favorite) and a lawn chair for a partner, he flips, spins, leaps, sits, and throws to the astonishment of an easily entertained audience.

4. The Wicks  First we met Paul. He’s an impressively strong, hardworking young man from Evesham, England, who works for six or eight months at a time as a stone mason, saves his money, travels the world until he’s broke, then starts the cycle again. Paul was on our first crew, one of six week-long Colorado Trail crews he was doing that summer. He had a long weekend after his last crew before catching a flight to the west coast for some more exploring, so we invited him to spend the weekend with our family in Denver. Two years later, Paul’s parents, Alan and Cheryl, came over to do a couple week-long crews. And, we invited them to spend the weekend with us before returning to England. The Wicks are a great, fun family. Our family has been blessed to get to know them, and it all happened because of a Colorado Trail work crew.

3. Stan Ward  Much has been written about leadership, but you can throw away all the books and come observe Stan if you really want to know what leadership is about. I’ve been privileged to serve on a half dozen crews lead by Stan, a retired developer from the Denver area. He teaches, exhorts, inspires, and makes sure a good time is had by all. When you’re working for Stan, the work somehow doesn’t seem as difficult.

2. A Two-Timber Bridge Near Miner’s Creek  There’s a stretch of trail above Breckenridge called Miner’s Creek where the trail dips and curves and climbs around the creek. A series of foot bridges keep hikers dry. When our crew arrived in 1999, several of the bridges were badly decayed and needed repair or replacement. After working for two days with a larger group on the bridges, Stan pulled my son Andy and me aside and led us down the trail to a spot where a small two-timber bridge had to be replaced. He gave us a rundown on what needed to be done then left us alone for a day and a half to tear out the old bridge, cut timbers, built a base, place the new timbers, shave the tops flat, and groom the trail to intersect smoothly to the new bridge. It was hard, wet, sometimes frustrating work. But today there’s a little bridge in the middle of a remote, serene section of trail that my son and I built together, and there’s a picture of the two of us standing on that newly finished bridge that hangs on the wall of my study. I wouldn’t trade the memories of building that bridge, or the picture of it, for anything in the world.

1. Andy and Kyle  As you’ve probably gathered, working on the Colorado Trail has been a father and son activity for the Brookshers. First it was Andy and me. Kyle was a little young the first two years and didn’t seem interested. By our third year, Kyle had heard too many stories about all the fun and was ready to give it a try. Every year it seems more difficult to find the time and coordinate all of our schedules, but somehow at least two of us find a way to get a crew in. Both boys went on their first Colorado Trail Crew when they were fifteen. Those late teen years in many ways are the most trying when it comes to fathers and sons. While we’ve had our moments, quite a few of the best have come on the side of a mountain, 10,000 above sea level with a Pulaski or pick in our hands and sweat on our brows. For that I’ll be eternally grateful to the Colorado Trail and its volunteer trail maintenance program. P