Two or three times a month Conservancy members gather to build and maintain trails, remove invasive weeds, collect trash, and make Claremont Canyon a great place to hike, walk your dog, or just enjoy the vista.
The past several months were especially busy ones for our volunteers. The Garber Park Stewards continue to remove invasive ivy and other weeds, and plant natives in their special corner of the canyon. We are pleased to have staff members from the Claremont Hotel volunteering with us.
We continue to work with the East Bay Regional Park District removing French broom from the lower Norfolk Trail in Gwin Canyon. Our goal is to clear and widen the trail for fire safety reasons and to allow the trail to eventually connect up with trails on UC land. Historically, the Norfolk Trail dead-ended at the border of the two properties. But that is now about to change.
With the help of Cal student volunteers on Berkeley Project Day (October 24th), we will begin a new section of UC’s Willow Trail leading west from the bottom of the steps at Signpost 29—grading the land, constructing new steps and installing creek crossings.
This is a lot of work and we appreciate our dedicated volunteers, the students, and our members who funded the purchase of materials needed for Berkeley Project Day. We are most grateful to Ashby Lumber for donating lumber and hardware for this project. A special thank you goes to our engineer-in-chief Tom Klatt and to Ann’s Catering for providing the lunches. Conservancy board members Fred Booker, Jon Kaufman and Bob Strayer all worked hard on these endeavors.
