Work party clears debris from Terrace Cutoff Trail

Mark Miner seems almost engulfed in limbs at the start of the job.

​It’s amazing how much work three dedicated volunteers can do in just over two hours. On Saturday morning Terrace Cutoff Trail was impassable. By early afternoon it was passable.

Mark Miner, who is Trail Trekkers’ trail building chief, Dave Weinstein, and a new volunteer with us, Mark Carraher, who is active with the Boy Scouts, removed many cubic yards of dead live oak limbs that had been blocking this trail and posing a fire hazard.

This was the first of Trail Trekkers new once-a-month trail work parties, which occur on the third Saturday of the month. Join us for future parties. They are satisfying!

Mark Carraher helped haul up what seemed for a while to be an endless grouping of flammable materials, making the area much safer.

Although Terrace Cutoff Trail is shown on our maps as an impassable trail (because a series of treads are needed to make it, well, truly safe and civilized), intrepid hikers can make it down this trail, which can be found between 8231 and 8239 Terrace Drive, and which connects to the well used Stockton-to-King Trail.

Within the year we hope to install treads to make this a fully functional part of our city’s wonderful network of trails and urban stairways.

— Dave Weinstein, Trail Trekkers president

Here’s what we moved uphill, to be picked up by crews from the city. Dave stands guard.

Here’s the trail after we cleared it — steep in parts and not advisable unless you are a good hiker. But passable. Photos by Dave Weinstein