LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 9/17/07
There's a marvelous trail in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, wonderful for many reasons. It starts just behind the electric sign that gives the time and temperature at the mouth of the canyon. The trail is open for the first mile or so, then gets blessedly shady as it meets the trees and starts winding through the forest, under a thick canopy of leaves. The dim coolness is relief from relentless summer sun, made more pleasant by the sound of flowing water; because the trail borders Cottonwood Creek. It rushes with a fierce thunder in spring, when the snow everyone skied on at Alta and Snowbird melts to water and fills the creek with white foaming surf. Over the months, the roar fades to a quiet murmur, a summer sound, lazy and gentle.
Best of all, this hidden trail is close to the city, a few minutes away from the freeway, and used mostly by mountain bikers. It is technical and only three and a half miles long, so it's perfect for a quick workout, a lunch hour wilderness getaway or a hard off-road ride detour from the traffic on the main road.
When I first discovered it in the early 90's, it was truly a wilderness. At the upper end, there was an old mining bridge where the floor had been stripped away and only the iron framing remained, shaky and weathered. You hoisted your bike on your shoulder and gingerly tightroped across bare rafters in a test of either courage or foolishness, I could never figure out which.
A troop of Boy Scouts tore it down and put up a well-constructed wooden bridge, sturdy and wide. A large parking lot was built behind the electric sign, with enough room for many cars and trucks. The trail became accessible to all.
And 'all' ---that is to say; many, many people---began using it. They rode it wet, and sprayed dirt out to the side of the trail and ground deep ruts and holes into the path; they rode it dry and ground down the dirt around the ruts and holes, ground it into dust.
Of course, this greatly eroded the trail. Soft dirt wore away until it became a gully within the trees, pocked by upthrust stones and roots. Obviously, trail maintenance was necessary, and so it was done.
The first few years, it was done right. The earth that had been pushed out to the side was shoveled back over the stripped rocks, and more dirt was trucked in to cover the bare hardpack. But dirt---earth, if you will---is fragile, and within a few months, it was gone again.
The next maintenance fill was sand. Sand is shifty and hard to ride whether wet or dry, and it also disappears quickly. The sand spread out to the sides of the trail, making it wider, so that the lush growth which had crowded the edges fell back and died off. And the dirt path widened more to fill the bare spots.
It was obvious sand wouldn't work for maintenance. So then whoever was in charge decided that gravel would do the trick. Chunky piles of gravel were left here and there on the trail to cover the holes and ruts, and the gravel was sprayed out onto nearby vegetation by the hard riding bikers, so there was more die-off, more erosion of the trail's features. And still more people came. Young saplings that had been sprouting near the path were run down or just died. Side paths were cut by bike tires down to the creek.
It is still a wilderness path in the woods; but not at all what it once was. Now, it is sandy in spots and flayed with small gravel stones in other spots, broken by ledges of granite with more erosion out to the sides to avoid rocks in the middle of the trail. It is crowded now.
So, once there was a beautiful narrow trail through a forest next to a creek, and it co-existed with the wildlife that used that forest for a home. Then people came, more and more people, and the path was widened and filled with material from other places that has choked off the plants and washed down into the creek and is slowly changing the forest floor and the creek floor for three and a half miles along the lower end of Cottonwood Canyon.
And the point is, is this just something that continues, willy-nilly, with the trail allowed to become wider and the sides of it to become more bare, as the earth gets packed into dust and washes away and is packed up with non-native filler? Does green only pertain to recycling cans and bottles in the city, or should we be thinking about our carbon footprint in the canyons where the animals live?
The trail I used to love to ride raises some very hard questions. I only wish I knew some answers.
Wina Sturgeon