Trails in Brief
Welcome to the UVTG home page. Here you can find information about our projects, past, present, and future. You can get directions to various trails in the Ukiah area. There are links to our supporters and other groups of interest.
Take a look around and make a donation if you can. Sign up for our Email newsletter or become a sponsor as an individual, business or group.
See you on the trails!
Latest News and Events
City View Trail Great and Getting Better
After numerous trail days and hundreds of volunteer hours, the new City View Trail at Low Gap Park is an established community asset. Trail building began last year with design and layout by UVTG, with Ukiah City and community input and support, plus a grant that allowed us to hire a small dozer to rough out the trail. Spirited community volunteers, including California Conservation Corp members, hiked untold miles while carrying chainsaws, shovels, Pulaskis, McLeods, posthole diggers, pruners and other hand tools to move soil, rocks and overhanging branches, smoothing out the trail bed, digging in culverts and rock drains, building small bridges, stairways and a bench. Also muscled up the trail were a hundred sacks of concrete, culverts, railroad ties, concrete blocks and wood.
The trail has gone through a winter of significant rains, and has held up very well. Final touches for this year include removal of invasive vegetation and replacement with native grasses, a cautionary barrier to protect fragile habitat, a short footbridge and improvements to drainage patterns.
Please come and enjoy this Ukiah Valley gem.
Scorpion Trail Re-routes and Widening
After re-discovering this overgrown trail at Mill Creek Park above the Talmage Dams, UVTG trail day volunteers opened it up and improved it over the past several years. In March of this year a team wallowed into the steep poison oak studded slopes to create new trail to bypass three switchbacks through a heavily eroded area. At the same time another team widened the existing trail below the re-route. Plans for next year include extension and improvement of this diamond in the rough. Oh, and yes, we did find a scorpion!
Lake Mendocino Trails Named and Improved
A crew of ten intrepid volunteers braved the cold rainy day last December to sink signposts for the five trails off the Deerwood Trailhead. The trails are no longer #1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, but are now named Manzanita, Moon, Woodpecker, Blue Oak and Soap Plant, respectively! On the February trail day this year an enthusiastic crew added a better access and 300+ yards of new trail to the existing Blue Oak Trail, formerly know as #4. UVTG is working with a graphics designer to create a user friendly map of these trails so hikers, bikers, runners and equestrians can all explore and enjoy this great asset, including the "Big Bridge," without getting lost. In the meantime, check out the printable map that can be found on the Trails page.
Trail Work is FUN!!!
This may sound crazy, but doing volunteer trail work really (no, really) is fun. You don't have to be super strong and we all work at our own pace. We usually have some tasty treats ( check out the cinnamon rolls in the photo!), you get to go out to beautiful places, work with fun people, you get a great work out, and... you go home feeling great about how you spent your time.
Even if you can just make it once a year, that's a huge help. We have a number of regular volunteers, and it really helps them keep coming out when they see new faces and don't have to feel like it's all up to them. Our goal is to contribute 650 hours of trail work this year. We need to average 65 hours per trail day, that's thirteen volunteers per day. Just give us a five hour day and you might be surprised how much you enjoy it.
