Northwest Youth Corps - Crews repair damaged trails in Lake County

A team of 10 Youth Corps workers headed by crew leader Casey Morrison and Tim Black spent nearly two weeks on sections of the Fremont Recreation Trail, including an area by the Mill Trailhead where this spring’s heavy rains and flooding of Crooked Creek washed out a 12-foot-deep, 50-foot-long section of trail.

Members of the “yellow” crew, named for the color of hard hats worn by the team, spent several days constructing a 400-foot-long reroute around the creek. Until the flood damage, the lower portion of the Crooked Creek Trail followed a road to a long-closed camp ground.

Because of the deep ditch, the trail was relocated to an old road that once served the Mill Creek lumber mill. Hills said a narrow gauge railroad transported finished lumber from the mill to the road near present- day Highway 395. During the 1920s and ‘30s, loggers harvested about 300 million board feet of timber from the region.

Along with making the trail available for hikers and equestrians, Hill said the work means the trail can be used for a public mountain bike tour on Sunday, July 31, the second day of the second annual Oregon Outback Challenge Mountain Bike Race.

Riders will meet at 10 a.m. in Lakeview and be bused to the South Fork Crooked Creek Trailhead, where they can ride the seven-mile-long Crooked Creek trail downhill to the Mill trailhead. Transportation will be provided back to Lakeview.

The Outback Challenge will feature a trio of mountain bike races, which will all begin and end at the Lakeview swimming pool park, on Saturday, July 30.

For information about the races and tour, contact the Lake County Chamber of Commerce at (541) 947-6040.

The Youth Corps trail crews have also been doing trail work in other backcountry areas of Lake County, including sections of the Fremont Recreation Trail burned by the Toolbox Fire in 2003. Crews have also upgraded sections of trails near Campbell and Deadhorse lakes. Hills said various loop trails are now available with distances ranging from 5 to 25 miles.

“It’s all in high elevation, beautiful forested country,” Hills said. “It’s all roadless. It’s all wild.”

For information on Fremont- Winema National Forests trails visit the forests’ Web site at www.fs.fed.us/r6/frewin/, then go to trailheads, or call the Fremont-Winema Lakeview office at (541) 947-2151.

Photo: Northwest Youth Corps trail crews have been busy working on the Crooked Creek trail and other Lake County trails on the Fremont and Winema National Forests.

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