30 Miles of Trail - in the City
If you’ve been to Austin, Texas before, you know that it’s a big city. Not necessarily a sprawling city, but a vibrant place with 271 square miles of buildings, restaurants, roads, urban fare, and millions of friendly people with their respective houses.
Along those lines, a few things I heard about Austin during our visit there last week were “the best riding in Austin is usually an hour drive away,” or “over 90% of Texas is private land,” or “postage-stamp sized parks are the norm in Austin.” This, among many compliments about Austin, of course.
The Hill Country Conservancy (HCC), led by George Cofer, is a nonprofit land trust committed to changing that. Chief among the HCC’s goals is to preserve Austin’s natural beauty and open spaces of the Texas Hill Country by providing recreational efforts in and around Austin for all to enjoy. This includes more mountain biking trails, which is music to IMBA’s ears. One of the HCC’s most significant efforts is to complete the Walk For A Day trail system, a soon-to-be 30-mile trail connecting Hays and Travis counties, “where one could run, hike or bike for an entire day.”
Accessible to beginners and experts alike, the trail will begin at Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin, and 30 miles later will reach the Barton Creek Greenbelt, passing through thickly populated urban environments and several historic Texas ranches now owned and managed for water-quality and wildlife habitat by the City of Austin. Sunset Valley is one of the other key cities involved.
Although the trail is not yet built, the Walk For A Day trail process and the field planning have been in the works for years. And us Trail Care Crews were lucky enough to be included in the fun part of the process – trail design! We spent some time this past week training the HCC on sustainable trail building techniques, and rough flagging and pin flagging some portions for the trail for future construction.
There are many steps to accomplishing this effort, and the HCC is rigorously organized to reach its strategic goals – notably acquire all of the land necessary to link the trail system together and enhance the recreational opportunities for which Austin is already famous. The actual trail building also hinges on critical city council votes in a few of the communities involved in the program. Although acquiring those votes has been challenging, the HCC is staying true to its vision and will work until the entire trail has been built, “surrounded by cool clean streams, abundant wildlife, and breathtaking views.”
We were very excited to be included in this process to bring more trails to urban Austin. The Walk For A Day trail project is a model in stakeholder partnership, urban recreation planning, and how to wade through public policy development process with patience and drive. We’d love to come back to support the design of future sections, and soon thereafter to ride the whole trail!
Read more about the Hill Country Conservancy, and the Walk For A Day Trail here: http://www.hillcountryconservancy.org/land-projects/walk-for-a-day-trail/.