Along for the Ride: Parley's Canyon aka the Dog Park and trailbuilding

For two weeks after Zion we worked at Tanner Park in Parley's Canyon, which is a dog park in a neighborhood of Salt Lake City next to I-80. In two weeks I met at least forty different breed of dog, and got to know the many dog-owners who frequent the park. It was definitely a big change from Zion the week before. It just so happens that the park has an EPA impaired waterway that is also the only creek in Utah with a native population of Bonneville cutthroat trout, which is used to stock all the lakes and rivers in the area. Dogs own this park and are obliterating the riverbank and filling the water with E. coli, to the outrage of environmentalists. The situation playing out in City Council is a smaller version of a huge battle going on right now about public land management. The Intermountain West has a ton of public land as a vestige of old ranching policies where it was decided that with homesteading it was best for ranchers to own just enough land for a house and public lands would be kept undeveloped to provide for enough grazing for everyone. Now there is recreation, oil exploration and still ranching on public lands while old ranch houses are being replaced with neighborhoods. Every different use is ruining it for all the others and no one wants to accept that you can't have it all. The decisive city council of the city of Salt Lake, however, has decided that dog access will be restricted in Tanner Park to help out the creek. It was our job to move the trails and designate dog-friendly areas.

Building a new trail is pretty straightforward. First you clear any vegetation in the corridor of the trail with loppers, saws, and maybe an ax. If that vegetation happens to have poison ivy vines on it, then you hope you don't get unlucky, I guess. I don't know I've yet to figure that one out. Next you cut the walking surface. You use the pick mattock, the pulaski and the McLeod to break up hard dirt, rip out stumps and roots and to make a smooth surface free of grass and vegetation. Finally you make the surface level and add in any water control measures to make the trail more durable. You use the plants that were removed to cover up any side trails to help keep people on the trail. Then you take a ride on a nearby ropeswing!

The first week we stayed at Legacy Nature Preserve, which is newly designated and does not yet live up to the name. It is out by the airport near the lake and has buzzing power lines running through it and it gets sprayed regularly with mosquito pesticide by airplane. It does, however have beautiful sunsets out to the West. Those are the mountains the Donner Party and thousands of other Oregon trailers and 49ers crossed on their way out west.

Sunset at Legacy

We could also see Salt Lake City and other towns along the Wasatch Front (as well as the oil refinery near our campsite).

The Wasatch Mountains behind Salt Lake City

The second week at the dog park our project sponsors at the SLC parks and rec let us stay in their conference room. It was nice to get away from the heat, bugs, and pesticide of Legacy, even if it meant being locked in the compound at night. We all seemed to be a little more photogenic while we were roughing it at Legacy.