Welcome to Alamden Quicksilver, VOCal!

No, we didn't welcome a choir or a capella group at the park cherished by my Quicksilver running club. VOCal, also written V.O.Cal or V-O-Cal, stands for Volunteers for Outdoor California, as the name states, a group of volunteers working on trail maintenance and trail building around the Bay Area to promote outdoor and hiking activities in the area.

This is a very well organized group which puts half a dozen of these trail projects every year, weekend-long projects gathering around 100 volunteers every time who camp on site on Friday and Saturday evening. Impressive logistic with a kitchen and Chef, quite a few boxes of equipment and even 4 showers!

Beyond all this equipment, there is also well trained volunteers and well established roles and responsibilities. For instance we were welcomed by volunteers to ensure we had signed the proper liability releases (hey, we are in America! ;-). I also met Francesca who was officiating as Camp Manager this weekend (green fleece in first picture above). Then the Chef and his cooking crew offered us a light breakfast and a sandwich station buffet. Morris Older was the project lead today and had spent several days working with the local Rangers to plan the work. Morris also gave us the background of this project.

Then Craig led a most needed stretching and warming-up session to get the blood and muscles flowing!

 Pro VOCal volunteers, Chris and Inome enjoying the early morning sun:

Finally, the Trail work leader, Chris, split us into 5 crews/groups so we could received tools and more detailed instructions and guidance from our respective team leads.

It was VOCal's first time project at our park but the 4th time they were working for the Santa Clara County Park Rangers. With more than 50 volunteers this time, we got a lot accomplished on the New Almaden Trail which is actually also the trail that our Running Club has adopted and maintained for the past 20 years under our Chief Trail Officer's leadership, Paul Fick.

For instance, I was helping last September on a section which was the center of this weekend's work. Back in September, we removed a series of uneven wood stairs then lowered the trail plunging into a deep gulch covered by a wood plank bridge. This time, 2 groups worked at removing that unstable bridge and significantly changing the access to the creek by creating a new trail segment.

3 other groups where dispatched further on the trail to take care of 13 sections. My group was led by Chas and we started with section 12, then 10, broke out for lunch then moved to section 9 and I left the group at 1 pm when they were starting working on section 7. Our team lead, Chas, in the foreground:

The weather has been quite unstable this week. While we had a nice breeze for our 100K race last weekend, the heat wave hit on Tuesday and Wednesday with temperatures above 90F. Then, today, we got some rain which is really unusual that late in the Spring. Barely enough to really get more wet than the sweat generated by hard trail work, but enough to catch a few interesting flower shots on the way back to base camp (Mockingbird Lane entrance).

Remarkable manzanita trees too, especially after the rain shower (their bark looks like human skin in places and like the tree was suffering some torture).

Big thanks, kudos and shout out to the V-O-Cal organization and their very friendly and dedicated volunteers, as well as the volunteers who joined from the neighborhood for first-time trail maintenance experience and way to give back after enjoying our local trails. Not only we are blessed to have all these nearby hills and protected parks, but we also have these volunteer organizations to support our official Park Rangers and complement their limited means to maintain these hundreds of miles for us to enjoy! Way to go VOCal!!!

And way to go, Santa Clara County Parks, celebrating 60 years, 1956-2016!!!

PS: we'll see tomorrow at Ohlone 50K if all that upper body strength training is paying off. Or not... ;-)

New Almaden: less trail running, more trail work

The good thing (gasp!) with running injuries is that it gives you more time to do something else, rather than just running for hours on weekends in particular... Still, the weather is so great these days though, with blue and crisp skies, I wish I was ramping my mileage up. Patience, patience...

This Saturday, Paul was organizing another of his monthly trail work sessions on the New Almaden trail that Dorsey (Moore) got our Quicksilver Running Club to adopt more than 10 years ago. We double the size of the crew we had in December, this weekend, a total of 9, from left to right on the picture: Marco, Amy, Morgan, Jeremy, Paul, Dorsey (back), Jim (front) and Pierre-Yves.

No, we are not praying the trail gods on the picture, just paying attention to Dorsey's instructions. Note the pretty damaged section with Jim standing a good feet down a ditch dug by water. This section is always problematic and will need more work (e.g. wood logs to consolidate and avoid water erosion) but we left it in much better conditions after a couple of hours of hard work, moving earth from the side of the trail and creating transversal gullies to capture and divert water streams from the trail. I did so much packing of the ground with my McLeod that my arms and shoulders were sore this Sunday, definitely some good cross training! :-) This tool is really the perfect and polyvalent/multipurpose companion of the trail worker: from digging, smoothing, leveling or packing the soil to cutting roots or raking dead leaves, stones and branches. Here are a couple of pictures from the trail after we worked on it and before we moved to other sections to complete our 5 hours of trail work.

Hopefully the water will get the memo next time and gently slide on the side of the trail rather than digging its way in the middle! We'll see in a few weeks hopefully as we need more rain this season.

Here is a small snake that Marco found while digging. The poor guy was still hibernating and so sleepy, quite harmless.

Our next session is scheduled for February 16 but check our club website for any weather-related changes. If you live in the Bay Area, hope you can join this fun and essential trail activity. And run this great trail, New Almaden, in the Almaden Quicksilver County Park. We start the Quicksilver 50K and 50-mile on this single track trail and it's in May so it will be much drier by then!

Sustainability: collaborating with Mother Nature

Today's trail maintenance work made me think of the fine balance between enjoying the outdoors and paying our due respect to Mother Nature. For some environmentalists, we should leave nature untouched. For others, we are entitled to do anything we want with natural resources on the planet. While I'm glad that we have extremists in the first group fighting the damage we, humans, do in the Amazon with deforestation or, closer, in Canada and North Dakota with unspeakable oil or tar sands exploitation (so bad that I'm sure the next generation is going to say about us: "what were you thinking, dudes...?!"), I would argue that "cutting" trails in parks is actually good for both parties, humankind and nature.

Although she can't speak for herself, I'm pretty sure that Mother Nature would confirm that she likes the visit of people respecting her. And, by respect, I don't just mean love but also care. That's another great thing about ultra trail running is that our sport invites us to give back to the trail with such trail maintenance work, since we are often the primary users of these trails, especially the most remote ones.

In our Quicksilver Running Club we are blessed to have leaders and members taking this very seriously. The Club has adopted one of the key trails of the Almaden Quisksilver County Park, New Almaden, a single track which requires a lot of care as it winds across trees and creeks in the San Jose hills. At the head of the yearly program is Paul Fick. Paul is an ultra runner, has directed the Quicksilver 50/50 races, is a chief cook at our ultra races BBQ, and our CTO (Chief Trail Officer)! He has been organizing these trail projects for the past 10 years and has countless story about the history of the park, the club or ultra trail running in Norther California.

We were only 4 volunteers this morning but, thanks to recent rain, the ground was very soft so we accomplished quite a lot. For instance, we widen the trail section which was known as the Tunnel Love because it was entirely covered by poison oak (yes, the poisonous one!) and forming a tunnel above your head. After years of fighting this abundant and dangerous vegetation (sorry Mother Nature...), look at how nice and safer the section now is:

Farther up, Paul had us destroy a trail, that is soften the ground to grass could claim the space back. It felt odd to Jeremy, Tim, Morgan and I to damage such a nice trail and we can certainly say that it takes much less time to eradicate a trail than it takes to build a new one.

3 steps of the trail restoration process:

Now, back to my title, this illustrates the subtle negotiation game between us and nature. In this case, we gave some space back. Otherwise, we worked at reclaiming some inches to widen the existing trail to make it safer for its users. A nice give and take and man-nature balance example. Speaking of negotiation, not that we had much say into it, but I thought it was cool that Mother Nature gave us some good weather all morning while we were working, with rain just starting as we were getting into our cars right on 1 pm! How nice of her!

You can check the dates of the upcoming projects on our newly redesigned club website and we look forward to seeing you not only on the trails but also joining the fun of this volunteering work! For a sustainable negotiation with Mother Nature...

National Trails Day: multiple opportunities to celebrate!

This Saturday was a very special day, the 20th anniversary of the American Hiking Association's National Trails Day! The perfect day to give back to the trail system we enjoy so much all year around, for racing or training. As the website says: "America's Largest Trailgating party!" ;-)

For me, it was also a way to celebrate the incredible wealth we have in the Bay Area with the combination of the perfect weather, the lack of pollution, the nearby hills, the abundant number of parks and trails and the tight ultra running community. I'm especially grateful for it after having just returned from 10 days in Dubai and Riyadh where I ran a total of 70 miles in extreme heat, dryness, pollution and sand dust.

See a few other pictures from my early morning run at Almaden Quicksilver in my Picasa album.

Then, we also celebrated Pierre-Yves' return on the trails after his 10 days at the hospital following his heat stroke at the end of Ohlone 50K, less than half a mile from the finish... For that, I drove down to Almaden Quicksilver Park in San Jose, early this Saturday morning and managed to run 14 miles including one with Pierre-Yves, Gary, Larry and Adona, before driving back to Cupertino for some trail maintenance work.

It's great to see you back smiling and healthy, Pierre-Yves, phew!

As I left the Mockingbird parking lot of the Almaden Park, it was great to see several dozens of volunteers gathering to help the Santa Clara County Park Rangers build a new bridge on the New Almaden Trail. Our Quicksilver Trail Maintenance master, Paul Fink, was there but just to give a hand this time, not to lead the project as he has done for the 10th year in a row throughout the year, and in particular in January when I could join his group.

In Cupertino, the trail maintenance project was with another organization, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD), at Picchetti Ranch, an area very familiar to all of us, Stevens Creek Striders. In a few hours we raised a section of the trail which gets very muddy in the winter. We were 10 volunteers, 1 Ranger and 1 District Technician, everybody taking on tasks very seriously and efficiently.

Again, a few other pictures are up in my Picasa album.

I hope you too were able to either enjoy one of our trails if you live in the US, or even help out on one of the thousands trail maintenance projects this weekend. And if you live abroad, I wish you can one day visit and see what our trails look like. Not that there aren't other places in the world with great trails too. But not in downtown Dubai and Riyadh at least...