Trail Never Ends for Path Caretakers

On a recent warm spring Sunday in the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness, a volunteer crew of nine graded Orange County’s newest trail through a final stretch of dense chaparral to join the end of another path that led to the canyon bottom below.

Ken Croker, leader of the crew and self-appointed caretaker of the Santa Ana Mountains’ trails, strolled across the newly blazed link and down the older path--an abandoned mining trail that Croker and company had rebuilt a decade before. From the scrub oak of the sunbaked slope above, the path descended into a stream bed where ferns grow in the shade of sycamore trees.

The leaves rustled behind him, and a surprised Croker found himself looking at two men leading their horses down the path that had, before that day, been inaccessible from above. The horsemen explained that they were out riding, found the remote path and decided to see where it led--inadvertently inaugurating the brand-new Lucas Canyon Trail.

When Croker started wandering the county’s backcountry 20 years ago, he found that all but two of the major trails were impassable. Hiking trails blazed in the Civilian Conservation Corps days of the ‘30s and other paths had grown over and sometimes completely disappeared after decades of disuse and neglect.

Most of these Santa Ana Mountain trails are within Cleveland National Forest, but Croker soon learned that the Forest Service has neither the money nor the manpower for extensive trail maintenance. So the Costa Mesa resident decided to take on the task himself, organizing a volunteer committee through the local Sierra Club and taking to the hills with pickax and lopping shears.

In seven years of monthly work trips, Croker and other volunteers cleared or rebuilt all of the major hiking trails. Since then, the crews have returned periodically to keep those trails clear and rebuild more obscure paths, including old mining paths and even Indian trails. In all, Croker estimates, the volunteer crews have been responsible for clearing and maintaining about 50 miles of trail.

“We don’t get enough money to maintain every single trail every year,” said Ernest Martinsen, recreation resource officer for Cleveland National Forest. While a few other groups do some volunteer trail maintenance, he said, “by far, Ken’s group does the most.” Last year, they logged more than 4,000 man-hours of work.

“We provide them the materials and the tools, and he provides the brawn and the brains,” Martinsen said.

Indeed, Croker and others in the group have acquired enough expertise to take on construction of brand-new trails, such as Lucas Canyon, from survey to completion. “They do good, quality work,” Martinsen said.

“The Southern California forests are traditionally undermanned because they don’t produce any commodities. They’re mostly recreation-oriented,” Croker observed. “They don’t know the condition of the trails nearly as well as we do.”

But the Forest Service does handle the required paper work on new trail construction, which can be formidable--especially in the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness south of Ortega Highway, Orange County’s only federally designated wilderness (it also covers parts of Riverside and San Diego counties).

The Lucas Canyon project, for instance, was surveyed in 1979 through 1981. Construction didn’t start until last June, after completion of an environmental assessment in which the route was moved slightly to bypass a minor archeological site. The initial 1.1 miles of the trail was completed over four weekends of work, with some finishing work remaining for a final trip this spring.

Hooking up with the old miner’s trail and then a stretch of dirt road, the new trail will provide access to more than five miles of hiking when a trail head is established on Ortega Highway near San Juan Hot Springs. Planned additions to the system will extend the trails deeper into the wilderness, eventually joining a network of trails that could provide several days of backpacking.

Croker’s group concentrates on longer and more remote trails used by serious hikers, leaving the shorter walks to the Forest Service and other volunteer groups.

The Lucas Canyon trail, which descends from the Sitton Peak Truck Trail, cuts across steep, rocky hillsides choked with scrub oak, hoary-leaved ceanothus, black sage, laurel sumac, sugarbush and other woody plants of the chaparral community.

The volunteers, usually in crews of about 10, work in assembly-line fashion: the front line cuts down the brush along the planned route; the next workers dig out the often-stubborn stumps; the tread of the trail is laid next, to be smoothed out by the last of the group. On their most recent weekend in Lucas Canyon, volunteers completed more than a quarter-mile of new trail.

It is difficult labor, but work that Croker--an aerospace engineer by trade--enjoys. “To me, it’s like therapy from work,” he said. “And it’s a good excuse to get out in the woods.”

Croker, 54, swings his pick with all the energy of his college-student son, David, who has joined his father on the trips since he was 6 years old. Croker’s wife, Carolyn, also takes part frequently.

Croker has also turned his passion for the under-appreciated Santa Ana Mountains--with its stands of giant oak, lush, sycamore-lined canyons, spring wildflower displays and unexpected pools and waterfalls--into a literary pursuit. His trail guide to the mountains, first published in 1976, is now in its third printing with a fourth on the way.

Other volunteer trail-builders range from occasional helpers to a core of regulars. Allyn Cooksey of Fullerton went along on his first trail-maintenance trip in 1976; he has been on more than 100 since. “I like these hills,” said Cooksey, who edits a calendar of trail projects.

Cooksey once led about 10 local Sierra Club hikes a year, but said he “got disgusted” because so few hikers were willing to volunteer for trail maintenance and decided to devote himself more fully to the project.

Croker also said he is discouraged that the trails project does not get more support outside his core of regulars. “It’s really kind of sad, with all the hundreds of people who hike and jog and mountain bike, that such a small percentage actually come out and help,” he said.

Croker still finds time to go out and just hike. He is a member of the Sierra Club’s 100 Peaks group, meaning he has climbed all of 100 designated western peaks, “so obviously I don’t spend all my time trail-building.”

But when he goes out for a hike, he said, he finds himself criticizing the trails he climbs, finding fault with the placement of a switchback or worrying about how the design didn’t allow for storm runoff.

“It’s terrible,” Croker said. “You can’t get it out of your system.”