IIT Fall Newsletter: On the Trails - Marsh Madness

By Jack Taylor

To those of you I have not had the pleasure of meeting on the trails this summer or around town, I am the new preserve and trail steward. I took over this position at the height of the summer season in July, and it has been a whirlwind of projects and activity to keep all of our trails in good order. On top of regular mowing, weed-eating and keeping trails clear, I’ve been looking for ways to improve our trail network.

One focus of our improvements is installing and repairing our bridging over wet areas of trail. My first task on the job was constructing plank bridging through the spruce-fir wet flat on the north side of our Blueberry Hill trail. Shortly after I put in our new trail spur at Broad Point which needed several bridged sections over wet spots. The exceptionally dry summer we have had makes it more difficult to predict exactly where we will need additional improvements, but hopefully we will have a good snowy winter and these spots can be discovered come Spring.

With the turning of the season things have calmed somewhat and I can direct my efforts to larger projects on the preserves. One of these projects is a whole series of upgrades and repairs to Elaine’s Trail around Hutchins Marsh. This trail is one of my favorites, as the view varies dramatically between peak tides - with herons stalking the mudflat on low tide, which becomes completely submerged on our highest tides. It is one of our longer and more difficult trails with short, steep descents to the bridges over the many small tributaries leading into marsh. 

Some of these have a few older stairs but many do not and we are seeing erosion along many of the hillside sections of the trail. To ameliorate the erosion, I have installed several new sections of waterbars, cleaned the old waterbars out, and slightly altered the trail route on a couple areas. These waterbars help to break the flow of water and retain the soils on the slope, helping to level out some of the more difficult sections. Several new flights of stairs have been cut on the steeper and slippery portions of trail and old stairs have been cleared of sediment to aid all-weather traversal. We have also replaced the oldest rough-cut cedar bridge at the beginning of the trail with our current style of sturdy plank bridging. All together these improvements should make navigating the marsh trail much more enjoyable and I encourage anybody up to it to take a spin to see for themselves.

I look forward to working my first winter here on the island and hope to meet more of you out on the trails