May 2026 Trail Day Report
5/17/26
Advocates May Trail Day was a stunningly beautiful day among the redwoods in all their Spring glory! What better way to spend a Sunday morning than helping the redwoods thrive and enriching the park visitor experience by improving the trails?
Good Fun, Good Cheer and Good Food! Thanks to our generous sponsors, the group enjoyed much needed and delicious coffees from Pacific Coffee Roasting, pastries from Companion Bake Shop and charged our energy with fruits and snacks from New Leaf Community Markets. A big Thank You to our sponsors!
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Due to limited parking at Nisene, the group gathered at the Community Foundation Santa Cruz County parking lot. Shout out to CFSCC for allowing us to assemble there before heading to the park!
​​​​​Thank you to every volunteer who made time to join us on the trails. The park thanks you too!
​Here were the 5 projects we tackled on May Trail Day:​​
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1. Vienna Woods Trail Brushback and Bridge Cleaning:
Jim lead an energetic team up to the Vienna Woods Trailhead and down to the work site alongside Aptos Creek. The bridge crew of Zippy and Daniel crushed the project, making the bridge look brand-new! After the bridge cleaning, they took-on a second project of filling a trail washout that was a safety hazard. Chris made some trail drainage improvements ​as well as brushback just downstream from Zippy and Daniel. Finally, Jill and Jim clipped, pulled, weed whacked and raked a long stand of encroaching ferns and blackberry upstream from the creek crossing point.
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2. Old Growth Loop Trail Brushback and Bridge Cleaning:
​The Old Growth Loop Trail got lots of love on May TD as Mikhail and his team cleared brush from the Loop and from the Advocate Trail as well as cleaned the Old Growth Loop bridge of debris. Park visitors have already noticed the improvement!
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3. Rail Splitting Team:
Vlad from State Parks led Sunday's session which included not only splitting redwood logs but also shaping the wood by rounding the edges and ensuring the end result is a sliver-less post or rail. Great work team!
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4. Native Forest Restoration Team:
The Old Growth Loop Trail was really buzzing with activity on May Trail Day with the NFR Team joining the Brushback Team on the Loop. It was a great day for NFR. The team started off with instructions for making an Ivy Roll (log roll) and Tree Lifesavers and then went at it! Our very energetic NFR team cleared more than 5,00 sq ft of ground ivy and created 25 tree lifesavers (14 redwoods, 6 Doug Fir, 5 Tan Oak) which were mostly merged into the ground ivy removal.
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5. Removing a Large Tree from the Aptos Fire Road
Andrea, with her spotter Angelica re-opened the Aptos Fire Road to emergency vehicles by removing a large Douglas Fir from across the road. The size and position of the tree made this project a challenge but not too much of a challenge for our sawyer-extraordinaire Andrea!
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