Thanks to the Beaver Creek Trails Coalition, Rimrock bikers, hikers and horseback riders will soon have almost two miles of nature to themselves for the first time.
In October, the Sunset Trails — the area’s first non-motorized trails — were adopted east of Rimrock in coordination with the coalition and the U.S. Forest Service.
“They have no designated trails around that community,” said Jennifer Burns, a recreation staff officer with the Coconino National Forest. “So this is a big deal for them. Granted, there’s a lot of social paths, so some of these cattle trails will be pretty radically fixed.”
With the main paths identified, along with trail realignment and parking and signage upgrades planned for a trailhead at the south end of Forestglen Road, which could provide a full USFS trail connector to a vista of Montezuma Well, two miles to the north, as as early as March.
Currently accessed through little more than a hooked piece of barbed wire hanging over a gap in a five-foot-tall fence, almost two miles of loop trails have already been surveyed by a Forest Service archaeologist, Burns said.
“So we can work on those, but we can’t work on anything else until we get the surveys to tell you what’s out there,” she said. “It’s a high expected density of archaeological resources throughout this area. The Forest Service worked with them to make sure these were in good locations.”
Although the coalition shared the desire of the USFS to avoid routing trails through any sensitive archaeological or environmental areas, not much has been found so far in the two miles surveyed, Burns said.
“Then our archaeologist has to do a follow-up and write what is usually a two-page document that is the clearance that says, ‘For this particular project, you are not affecting any archaeology,'” she explained. “‘You may go ahead.’”
Stan Mish, vice president of the Beaver Creek Trails Coalition, hopes the entire six-mile network of social trails in the area can be cleared for upgrades by April.
For the full story, please see the Wednesday, Nov. 18, issue of the Camp Verde Journal.
