These work pictures are a sampling of what’s been occupying nearly every minute of my time over the last two months.

When invasive thistles take root on land that you love and respect, you should take whatever action is needed to remove them and prevent a massive weed infestation from occurring there. Removing Scotch and Musk thistle in Horse Gulch with a hand tool has been this blogger’s latest form of community service in trying to stem the growth of these nasty weeds and keep them from reproducing. After being given permission by Durango’s Parks and Cemetery Manager Ron Moore to remove the weeds, this blogger…

A former boss of mine once told me that “sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.” Today it was the rugged downhill of the Dutch Creek trail in the San Juan Mountains that ate my friend Jake’s mountain bike. On a shuttle ride from the top of Dutch Creek trail to the lower Hermosa Creek trail head, Jake Walsh’s hard-tail, rigid 29er broke completely in half after a few creek crossings during the fast part of the descent.      

A group of about 15 Trails 2000 volunteers cut back overgrown gamble oak, smoothed out rocky areas and installed water bars for erosion control on Telegraph Trail Wednesday afternoon. Rallied by Trails 2000’s crew leader Daryl Crites, the group worked on the ascent up to the pass from 4 to 7 p.m. before being treated to some pizza at the base of the Meadow Loop. This blogger applauded the effective usage of water bars on this project, yet disagreed with Crites in person on the…

Durango’s Natural Lands, Trails and Sustainability Director Kevin Hall said at a meeting last week that the lower part of Cuchillo and Mike’s Trail are on the map for a possible reroute due to some problems with ruts caused by erosion that are similar to what was occurring on Stacy’s Loop. One would hope that these intermediate trails that have built there reputation off of their ability to provide for fun downhill descents and banking turns will not be pacified and switchbacked under the guise…

Blogger’s note: the identity of the road biker in this story will be defended and protected at all costs—of course I cannot recall her name! Her story, on the other hand, is laid out in detail from on-the-record interviews. For this story her pseudo name is Bonnie. If you were riding your bike down the highway and a road flagger in a work zone told you that you could not pass with the rest of traffic because you were on a bike, you’d probably be…

Reefer Madness is a sensationalist, exploitation film of the 1930’s that exemplifies many of the fear-driven, propagandist deceptions about marijuana that continues to permeate culture and public opinion in America to this day. On the ballot in Colorado this November, registered voters will have the opportunity to burn and bury many of these exaggerations and grow the seeds of change out of the dishonest, nitrogen-bearing properties of this corpse known as marijuana prohibition. Among the list of  myths about marijuana that Colorado voters and this…

Cleaning up the trailheads of Horse Gulch and Dalla Mountain Park is a goal of the Natural Lands Preservation Advisory Board for 2012 in Durango. At their meeting on Monday, Durango’s Natural Lands, Trails and Sustainability Director Kevin Hall provided it as one of 15 goals for the board to undertake this year. “Making sure the drainage works well, some base course grading, maybe some boulder placement,” Hall said. “If you remember, we budgeted for some degree of trailhead improvements a year ago. We didn’t…

A proposal to ban smoking on Durango’s open-space lands proposed by the Lasso Tobacco Coalition met opposition from the City’s Natural Lands and Preservation Advisory Board Monday.  Choked by a sense of personal intrusion and the inability of the City to enforce the proposed smoking ban on City open-space lands, the Board collectively argued against it. Together they asked Board member and City Council Member Dick White to voice disagreement with it at the Council’s study session on April 10, 2012. In addition to banning…

The chairman of the Natural Lands Preservation Advisory Board was rallying the Board to take on the task of naming unnamed geographical features on City-owned open-space lands at their meeting Monday. “There’s ridges with no names, there’s creeks with no names, there’s cliffs,  there’s trails with no names,” said Chairman Paul Wilbert. “It seems like that’s something that maybe we could help with.” “Then set up a process and ideally there’d be a list. If it’s benches, where are the places that they would go,”…

Horse Gulch photography Here’s some trash that my buddy and I picked up in Horse Gulch on our hike today.

Public hears Webb Ranch recommendation versus CDOT proposal An assemblage of the Colorado Department of Transportation’s Region 5 employees was greeted this month by a contingent of dissidents voicing their opposition to the agency’s proposal of connecting US 550 to US 160 at the Bridge to Nowhere. Most of the dissidents were a group of engineers organized by landowner Chris Webb, whose property would be condemned, and a canyon then bulldozed and excavated into it in order to align US 550 with the Bridge to…

If you think Horse Gulch should be left as primitive, undeveloped open space, check out our petition and consider signing it. It speaks against the ideas of putting in a paved wheelchair path or a vault-toilet bathroom at the main trail head, among other things. Click the link below to read or to sign the petition. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-primitive-horse-gulch/

New signage and benches were placed in Horse Gulch last week by Trails 2000 and Durango’s Natural Lands, Trails and Sustainability Director Kevin Hall at the convergence point at the bottom of the Meadow Loop. Trails 2000 also recently put in some sizable water bars on the road up into the Gulch.