This past June ACE had both Southwest and Mountain-west based crews working side by side on the Bunker Creek Trail. The Bunker Creek Trail is located in the Dixie National Forest, Utah’s largest national forest, expanding over 170 miles in Southern Utah. The trail, which is intended for mountain bikers, is a total of 11.6 miles one way and reaches elevations of over 10,000 feet. The single track Bunker Creek Trail is designed to start at the top of the mountain with the bikers having another person at the bottom to shuttle them.
In the summer of 2017 this area of Dixie National Forest, known as Brian Head experienced a massive forest fire expanding over 100 square miles including the area of the original Bunker Creek Trail. In partnership with the Dixie National Forest, the ACE trail crews came in with the goal to reroute some areas of the trail with a more sustainable slope as well as maintain and clear parts of the existing trail. The ACE Southwest crew, led by ACE Crew Leader, Emily Merlo was out for four project weeks and the Mountain-west crew, led by ACE Crew Leader, Jordan Herron for six project weeks.
To re-establish the Bunker Creek Trail post-fire, the new tread was created initially with a dozer and then smoothed out with hand tools by the crew. The dozer created multiple reroutes which resulted in approximately four miles of trail that the crews completed in June 2018. Another crew returned in August 2018 to complete .6 miles of trail that connected to the top end of the North Bunker Trail as well.
The Bunker Creek Trail is located just down the road from Cedar Breaks National Monument and features beautiful views of light-colored volcanic rock as well as bright pink cliffs. The ACE crews were privileged to work in this beautiful area in partnership with the US Forest Service with the Cedar City Ranger District.
ACE is looking forward to continuing to partner with the Dixie National Forest in restoring and enhancing safe recreational trail access in 2019.