Pre-season and in-season maintenance of the snowshoe trails along Century Drive has changed over the years towards less clearing of beetle-killed lodgepole blowdown and more clearing of saplings. The delayed snowfall on the trails this year provided an opportunity to reflect on these changes over 13 seasons.
Upon moving to Bend, I became an avid snowshoer and gained awareness of the dedicated snowshoe trails via Bend Parks & Recreation’s Yetis Snowshoe trips led by Leslie Olson. In 2013, Jim Davis, AKA Dr. Snowshoe, was looking to pass the torch on support of the snowshoe trails; fellow snowshoers raised my hand. Snowshoe trails were then a bit of a step-child; skiers were just so happy to not have snowshoers stomping on their tracks. It was also a time with active Forest Service support of trail maintenance. CONC would issue a request for CONC members to show up at a particular sno-park on a given Saturday to help clear trails or stock the shelters with firewood. Chris Sabo, Recreation Team Lead with the Forest Service, and others from the Forest Service would arrive in a Forest Service pickup. They would distribute hand saws from the back of the truck and direct folks down different trails. One soon learned that those accompanying Chris would not likely get back to the sno-park until dusk, if they were lucky!
There were more miles of winter trail than the coordinated effort could handle. Small group work sessions were encouraged. On December 16, 2013, long-time volunteer Dennis DeLapp and I headed to Meissner Sno-Park on our first “small group” work session. We cut 45 trees on the snowshoe trail. Now, you might say “You remember that?”. No, but the Forest Service asked that we report our trail work: the number of hours, volunteer names, number of trees cut and number of signs installed. Being a bit of a data nerd, I also recorded the stats in a spreadsheet
The 2013/14 winter season was the first of two consecutive low snow seasons. As shown on the image below, only 10” of snow was measured on January 31, 2014 by the USDA between Swampy & Meissner sno-parks (full history available here). The low-snow conditions resulted in blowdown being more significant obstacles and work clearing blowdown could continue longer into the season
Word spread about volunteering to clear snowshoe trails and by mid-January 2014 the weekly work sessions grew with as many as 10 volunteers participating; many of which would continue to volunteer for weeks and years to come. As shown in the graph below, 377 trees were cleared from the snowshoe trails at Swampy, Edison, Dutchman, and Meissner sno-parks from December 2013 through mid-March 2014. Beetle-killed blowdown wasn’t limited to snowshoe trails. In an article in the December 26th edition of the Bend Bulletin about CONC’s trail maintenance work at Edison Sno-park, Chris Sabo reported that 300 trees were cleared that day from just 5 miles of Nordic and snowshoe trails. Most of the trees were lodgepole pine that had been killed by mountain pine beetles 10-15 years previously.
Beetle-killed lodgepole continued to fall through the summer of 2014 providing abundant opportunity for pre-season trail maintenance. The photo to the right shows Fred Tanis, Bill Burwell, Dave Whistler and Dennis DeLapp looking over a tangle of trees just cut on a snowshoe trail at Edison Sno-Park in October 2014
With a fixed supply of beetle-killed lodgepole, the number left to fall each year decreased. Blowdown counts also varied based on intensity of the early-season storms. Increased counts in 2022/23 reflected, in part, post-covid catch-up. Saplings moved to the forefront in 2023. The saplings were the new growth after the late 90’s beetle kill and they had now reached sufficient height to be troublesome. An early, wet snow resulted in the saplings arching over and blocking the snowshoe trails. On one work session in January 2023, several dozen saplings were cut along the Long Loop Snowshoe trail at Swampy sno-park. Similar occurrences of snow-laden saplings were cleared from the Porcupine Snowshoe trail at Swampy, on the Meissner Snowshoe trail and on the Todd Lake Loop.
Saplings continue to capture increased attention as many have now reached heights interfering with visibility of reassurance markers. A crosscut still is necessary for the beetle-killed blowdown and occasional large hemlock; but the smaller saws have had the greater workout in the last couple of years and that trend is expected to continue.
A few beetle-killed lodgepole remain standing. Some will fall during the early-season storms. Should you encounter one across the trail, please go to the Trail Maps & Info page under the Resources Tab on the CONC website, look for the yellow Danger graphic, and submit a Winter Trail Report. Doing so will help the CONC volunteers focus their trail maintenance efforts.
