This 5-year project, which began in 2017, was led by Bob Galloway until mid-2021 despite a cancer diagnosis in 2020. Jenny Blackmore assumed project manager responsibilities including overseeing completion of the project and new work on an extension of the nearby Wagon Trail.
The new trail system added over six miles of new sustainable trails to the Sandia Ranger District trail network.
Work was approximately 73% finished by September 2020. Work the previous year included major reroutes of Armijo Trail #222, a trail popular with hikers, equestrians, runners, and mountain bikers. Other tasks included clearing trail corridor, building designated reroutes of user trails, and obliterating extensive sections of unsustainable trail.
Work in 2020 was impacted by a lawsuit against the Forest Service over the Mexican Spotted Owl as well as by COVID. Crews limited their efforts to building planned trails in masticated areas or in less dense ponderosa forest. Several sections of unsustainable user trail were bypassed and obliterated, and dozens of trail signs were installed.
Work in 2021 included completing new trails This Way, That Way, and Vista. Crews also obliterated unsustainable user trails, cut trail corridor, removed deadfall, rerouted sections of Un Poquito Trail in Cold Canyon, and completed the installation, begun in 2019, of trail signs at the new trail junctions.
