STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK

PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK and WRTC

Sara Gress has a simple way of describing what the Wood River Trails Coalition does for the valley's trail network.

"We're bringing trails to the people versus people to the trails," said Gress, executive director of the WRTC.

Sara Gress in the turquoise helmet and her cohorts built a new bridge near the popular Two Dog Trail near Rotarun last month.

That philosophy is driving an ambitious season of trail work across the Wood River Valley, from a modest wooden bridge on Nayda's Trail near Rotarun Ski Area west of Hailey to a 70-foot steel span headed for Fox Creek that will arrive by helicopter.

The Nayda's Trail bridge replacement was straightforward by comparison. The old bridge was cracking in half and had reached the end of its useful life. Over the winter, program staff put together a materials list, the BLM purchased the materials and crews cut the wood to spec.

With preparation factored in, the project took about a week and a half to two weeks from start to finish. Cost for materials: roughly $2,500.

That same approach is being repeated at two more locations up Croy Canyon, with all three wooden bridges coming in at under $5,000 in materials combined.

Trail crews raked the Hang Tight/Hang Loose Trail this past month to keep vegetation from encroaching.

The Fox Creek bridge, more than a mile up trail from the popular Fox Creek Trailhead, is a different matter entirely.

That particular crossing has been blown out three times, with the 2017 flood being the most destructive.

Each time, the creek channel shifted a little more, leaving whatever replacement bridge was in place sitting awkwardly in the middle of the stream rather than spanning it properly. The 26,000 visitors who use it each year have had to ford the creek or balance across slippery logs, creating safety risks and damaging fragile stream banks.

Gress, who was working on the Forest Service trail crew at the time of the 2017 blowout, watched the pattern repeat long enough to know a new approach was needed.

Bikers, hikers and joggers are enjoying the new QHC trail that the Wood River Trails Coalition built in partnership with the BLM.

"We decided that getting a huge bridge to span the floodplain will just fix the problem," she said. "We can let the creek do its thing underneath the bridge and make a generational fix where, hopefully, even the people who come after us don't have to worry about it."

The bridge being manufactured by the North Carolina-based Contech Engineered Solutions is 70 feet long — roughly a fifth of a football field. Its steel superstructure will carry wooden decking and, once installed, it should require only routine maintenance to the planking and ramps.

The total project cost is approximately $211,000, funded through private family foundations such as the Nalen Family Foundation and the James and Barbara Cimoino Family Foundation, the Wood River Women's Foundation, the National Forest Foundation Ski Area Conservation Fund, PEG Foundation and significant in-kind support from the Forest Service. Foundations

The coalition is still about $21,000 short of its goal, and donations can be made through the current projects page at https://woodrivertrailscoalition.org/foxcreek. The WRTC is striving to meet a $10,000 match by May 28.

Trail work often involves some lumberjack work. COURTESY: WRTC

The installation timeline matters for anyone planning summer trips to Fox Creek. Crews will begin a falling operation around the bridge site this week. The trailhead will be closed May 11-14 while the bridge is unloaded from a large truck and culvert replacement work is done.

Because the span is too long and too heavy to fly in one piece, it will be delivered in two sections. It will be stored in the open grassy area just outside the Fox Creek parking lot until June 27-29 when a helicopter will fly the sections into the site.

The trail itself will remain open throughout the summer, with construction crews working on-site from June 1 until some time in August. Hikers can expect to navigate around equipment during that period.

The actual installation involves building abutments on each side of the creek, constructing midstream cribbing — a stackable support structure similar in concept to Jenga blocks — to hold the two bridge sections in place while they are bolted together and secured to the abutments.

The stream banks above and below the abutments will then be armored to withstand future flooding.

"If we have a flood that takes that bridge out, we have much bigger problems," Gress said with a laugh. "We've got Noah and an Ark."

While the Fox Creek project dominates the summer calendar, the WRTC is also completing the QHC Trail.

The name summons thoughts of the Home Shopping Network, but it’s actually short for Quigley/Hang Tight Connector — a name coined by the Blaine County Recreation District.

The trail begins on the Quigley Trail opposite Sage School in Quigley Canyon and climbs to meet the Hang Tight/Hang Loose Trail, linking Quigley Canyon to Hangman's Gulch.

Like Hang Tight/Hang Loose itself, the QHC Trail is built and maintained to the wider standard required for adaptive mountain bikes, which means crews will be out raking it regularly to prevent trail material from narrowing the tread over time.

Hang Tight/Hang Loose has become one of the most-used trails in the valley since opening, briefly claiming the top spot within its first month of operation.

Gress attributes part of its popularity to its loop format — hikers and riders start and finish at the same place. Its popularity can also be attributed to the fact that many users appear to be walking or biking directly from their homes in Hailey rather than driving to a trailhead.

"It's bringing trails to the people," she said. "You don't need a car."

That accessibility is central to how Gress thinks about the BLM trails in the south valley more broadly. With only 13 percent of Ketchum's workforce living in Ketchum, she sees the expanding network as serving the people who actually live and work in the valley rather than primarily the visitors who come to use it.

"Twenty years from now, Hailey could become a tourist destination as opposed to just a satellite for Ketchum," she said. "When these trails are built out, you could conceivably start from Hailey and ride singletrack all the way to Stanley."

The WRTC operates with ten staff members — five year-round and five seasonal trail crew. It works within a cooperative framework with both the Forest Service's Ketchum Ranger District and the BLM.

John Kurtz, the BLM's recreation planner, is deeply involved in the day-to-day trail layout work. Trail contractor Brian Vaughn of Titus Trails provides heavy machinery and construction expertise. And the Forest Service contributes in-kind support, including the engineering oversight required for the Fox Creek bridge project.

The arrangement fills a gap that federal funding alone cannot. When Gress worked on the Forest Service trail crew between 2015 and 2018, there was enough federal money to employ exactly one trail crew member for the Ketchum Ranger District for 400 miles of trail.

That funding picture has not improved significantly since then, and the WRTC now effectively handles the construction and maintenance work that federal staffing levels cannot sustain.

Gress changed the organization's name from the Wood River Bike Coalition and expanded its mission to serve all trail users when she took over. She credits that shift with much of the coalition's subsequent growth.

"When you include more people, things are typically more successful," she said.

The coalition has more than 800 members and accepts memberships at any level—even dogs, with no minimum or maximum.

Volunteer opportunities begin from 5:15 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 21, with a raking session on Hang Tight/Hang Loose. Volunteers are welcome to bring their bikes so they can ride the freshly groomed trail when the work is done. Additional volunteer dates are posted on the coalition's website at https://woodrivertrailscoalition.org/wrtc-events. The site also includes a trail reporting form for anyone who encounters a downed tree or trail hazard.

Five to six miles of new trail on BLM land are also planned for the south valley this summer, with construction scheduled to begin in August. Exact locations are still being finalized.

"People have told us that their lives are so much better here than wherever they came from because they have direct access to trails that we maintain," Gress said. "We've been told: Thank you for providing a quality of life we haven't gotten somewhere else."

She noted that most people don't realize how exceptional the local trail network is by any standard comparison.

"If you go to another forest — say McCall — you're going to hike over a hundred trees per mile because they just don't have an organization doing what we do," she said. "Someone complains there's a single tree down on Chocolate Gulch, and I tell them it'll be gone in three days. They are lucky for that. It does not happen in a lot of places."

COMING UP:

The Wood River Trails Coalition will hold its Trail Season Kickoff Party at The Elephant’s Perch in Ketchum from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, May 28. There’ll be raffle prizes from Patagonia, Black Diamond, Therm-a-Rest and WRTC, beer and tacos from the La Parilla food truck.

New members will get a free MiiR cup, while all members get their own cup filled with Sawtooth Brewery beer.

Heck, you can even sign your trail-loving hound up for a membership for which they will receive a WRTC dog tag and a 10 percent discount code for Idahound grass-fed, small-batch, locally sourced raw dog food.