After being closed for three years, the Los Pinetos trail reopened Saturday after volunteers with the SCV Trail Users group worked to refurbish the hiking the path.
“Today we are recruiting volunteers to come and help with the problems on the trail, including some ruts and some brush clearance in order to reopen the trail,” said Zachary Likens, of the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department. “This trail has been closed for over three years, since the Sand Fire in 2016.”
Likens said after the fire there was also a large amount of rain that ended in further destruction along both the top half and lower half of the trail located a little over a mile east of the Placerita Canyon Nature Center.
“After today, we’ll be able to open up the trail for public use,” said Likins.
A total of 36 volunteers from SCV Trail Users were apart of the operation Saturday in order to open up the trail once again.
“We build new trails and keep trails open,” said Tim Burkhart, a board member for SCV Trail Users. “We like to be able to get all the users together, including the hikers, bikers, the horse folks and everything else like that, and do the work on these trails that they need in order to support them.”
Calling it a “grassroots” effort, Burkhart said the group is able to pushback against the potential closure of trails. On Saturday, SCV Trail Users worked on three miles of trail total, using hand tools in order to refurbish the trail.
“The county came through a re-bulldozed the trail, so we were just putting in water breaks, so the rain comes it won’t erode the trail,” said Rhodney Thompson, director of the Santa Clarita High School Mountain Bike Race Team. “We were basically doing the finishing touches and then doing a lot of the trimming up top.”
In addition to the nonprofit group the SCV Trail Users, members of the Concerned Off Road Bicyclists Association (CORBA) were in attendance helping with the volunteer effort, said Thompson.
“This is a very popular mountain biking, hiking, mulit-use trail, said Thompson. “And it’s been closed for about three years and everyone wanted to get her back open.”
