A few days after last October’s infamous windstorm, I distinctly recall wading through the wreckage in Cady Hill Forest, mouth agape, thinking to myself, “This is going to take years to clean up.”
The good news is that I was very wrong, and we’re cautiously optimistic that we’ll have at least part of Cady Hill Forest back online and rideable by early to mid-summer. There are still a lot of unknowns but the recovery picture is becoming increasingly clearer each day.
The timber harvest and salvage effort on the southern end of Cady Hill Forest (in the Charlie’s Trail/Florence neighborhood) was completed in late January. Logger Brian Lafoe and his team have moved on to their next job and will return this spring to do a bit of earth work on the paths they used to reach the harvest areas.
The Lafoes’ careful work with big machines in the woods is evident, as is the planning of the professional foresters. Together, they minimized additional damage to singletrack trails by avoiding them when possible and crossing at right angles when necessary.
Jed Lipsky and his team are slated to return to the northern side of Cady Hill (Bear’s/Cady Hill Climb) and complete what remains of that timber harvest before spring. The “Car Wash” trail that connects Cady Hill Forest to Strawberry Hill Farm will likely require a major reroute; that area was among the hardest hit and was actively being logged in late February.
Professional sawyer Mark Foster began working in Cady Hill last week to clear the smaller, unharvestable blowdowns that are not of adequate commercial value to warrant a timber harvest, are unreachable with a logging team, and/or are too dangerous for volunteers to tackle.
These are essentially small clusters of fallen trees, as pinpointed by both the consulting forester and Stowe Trails Partnership staff, that present either a safety hazard or are impeding the trails in some way. Foster will cut the snagged trees and drop other trees as necessary so that, come spring, we as a community can safely handle the remaining cleanup.
The ultimate goal of this step is to clear the lesser affected trails (Snake, the Schween Haus Loops, Cady Hill Connector, Upper Bear’s, etc.) and create a spring loop that will be accessible via the substation on Cady Hill Road, and potentially via the iRide parking lot.
It’s worth noting that some of these clusters are so dangerous that we’ll have to simply reroute the trail around them, with no chance of cutting/removing them by hand.
As we continue to clean up and untangle the Cady Hill mess, it’s important to remember that the affected parts of Stowe’s trail network were, relatively speaking, fairly small and there’s still a ton of riding available during the 2018 season.
Adams Camp, Sterling Forest and Trapp Family Lodge trails incurred very minimal damage, if any, and will be rideable as soon as the weather permits. So although it will be some time before we’re “back to normal,” there’s still plenty of trail to keep us all happy.
For the 2018 season, we’ll undertake a lot of proactive/pre-emptive maintenance at Adams Camp and Sterling Forest to ensure that those trails are prepared for the uptick in traffic while Cady Hill is fully or partially offline. In addition, we plan to break ground on a new connector trail in Adams Camp.
So what’s next? The recovery sequence looks something like this:
• Upon the conclusion of Mark Foster’s removal of the one-off blowdowns, we can begin the volunteer-based recovery efforts in earnest. Stowe Trails Partnership’s annual Spring Trail Work Day (Saturday, May 5, starting at 9 a.m.) will focus on getting as much of Cady Hill rideable as possible, short of the areas that were destroyed and will require full rebuilds by a professional trail builder (Florence, Charlie’s, Bear’s, Cady Hill Climb).
• We’ve enlisted Tom Lepesqueur, a longtime trail boss at Highland Mountain and the man responsible for trails like Cat’s Paw, for the rebuild of Florence.
• In addition, we’ll have several other extremely talented local trailbuilders rounding out maintenance and construction efforts for 2018.
Although it’s been said many times, we want to once more thank our partners at the town of Stowe and Stowe Land Trust for their unending efforts to not only assist in the trail recovery but to also ensure the long-term health of Cady Hill Forest.
And thanks to you, the Stowe community, for your support and interest in restoring Cady Hill. If you haven’t yet bought your FTW Bike Raffle tickets supporting the recovery effort, you can do so at stowemountainbike.com/raffle.
Cheers to another great season, whatever Mother Nature may bring!
