It’s October, and the rain has arrived!

“If we hadn’t packed rock into the clay soil, we would have just been sliding all over the place!” Executive Director Jim “JT” Taylor reported.

On Saturday, October 11, we were joined by seventeen (17) hardworking and resilient volunteers who made the best of an extremely wet workday to accomplish our goals: hardening slippery soils and completing a trail re-route on a hill that was too steep.

This was our second work party on the new trail project at the Port of Skagit SWIFT Center. With a new project come new challenges related to the landscape, water flow, and soil quality.

We are working closely with the Port of Skagit to comply with permit requirements that protect the water quality of Brickyard Creek and the health of the forest.

For example, we are focusing on smaller segments of the trail system at a time to minimize exposed soil and sediment runoff. We cover our stockpiles and use straw wattles to prevent muddy stormwater from flowing into the creek.

In other projects, we have been able to excavate deeply into steep hillsides to create a level grade for trail users. In this project, however, we are not digging as deeply; instead, we are protecting tree roots by building small retaining walls backed with ballast and elevating the trail surface with native soils.

Much of the soil here is heavy with clay. If you’ve ever walked on clay soils on a rainy day, you know how comically slippery they can be! We find it necessary to stabilize the native soil by compacting it with rock and gravel.

Our next volunteer work party is Saturday, October 25. We’ll continue our efforts to stabilize the trail surface and perform trail-side restoration work, transplanting ferns to beautify the area so the trail looks natural, as if it has always been there.

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