Recent warm daytime temperatures and above freezing overnight temperatures are signaling the start of “Mud Season” in the greater Sun Valley area. This is the time of year when we need to take care not to travel on muddy trails and roads. What may have been a frozen, snowy route a couple of days ago may have turned into a slushy, muddy path that should be avoided.

Walking and riding when conditions are wet and muddy is especially hard on trails. Soil is easily displaced and erosion problems can result.

Photo of a trail getting widened - people have skirted around what was a previously wet condition.

We often see muddy trails become widened by people venturing off trail to avoid wet conditions. This can cause a single-track trail to become wider and wider.

The situation can escalate to the point where the trail becomes braided.

The above photograph shows a trail that is starting to become braided.

Braided trail conditions occur where new trails get beat in around a wet section of trail. Eventually the new trail gets wet and muddy. Then that new trail is skirted around, and yet more trails get established. This can lead to trail failure and to large volumes of soil being washed away into nearby waterways. That’s tough on fish habitat, and it makes for unsustainable trails.

Please do your part and take personal responsibility for the good care of our trails by turning around where you encounter wet, muddy conditions.

Here is a link to a news article that includes a video clip about the importance of staying off of wet trails (The video features an interview with David Gordon, former Trail Coordinator with the Ketchum Ranger District.  David now heads up Boise’s Ridge to Rivers trail system.):  City Says People Are Loving Boise Trails To Death

This blog is brought to you by Big Wood Backcountry Trails. If you’d like to receive updates about the trails and the work of BWBT, go to our websites and add your Email address to our Email list. We use a blind cc format for our Emailings, so no one’s Email address is shared with anyone else. If at any time you wish to be removed from our Email list, simply reply to any Email from BWBT with the subject heading “remove.” Here is a link to our E-list page: E-list

Thank you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 6:17 am by Chris Leman and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.