Very Difficult    ●    Multi Day    ●    Miniumum Age: 18 (more info)

Date(s):

The Chicago Lakes Overlook Trail at Summit Lake Park has transformed over the last four years through thousands of volunteer hours that have improved the trail surface making it recreationally accessible to wheelchairs and thousands of tons of rock that now armor and protect the up-slope and down-slope plant communities.

This year WRV will return to this iconic Denver Mountain Park landscape at 12,800 feet above sea level to focus our restoration efforts on the a heavily impacted area on the far side of Summit Lake. New signage and fencing from previous projects now keep users on trail, but nearly decade of uncontrolled use had a catastrophic affect on the vegetation which is now leading to erosion. In 2014, we will continue or restoration efforts by planting seedlings that were grown out from seeds collected by WRV volunteers in 2013. There will also be plenty of rock-work to create habitat for our seedlings, and there will be some trail maintenance to improve the heavily used trails in the area.

Volunteers will car-camp Friday and Saturday night at a base camp (11,600ft) then carpool to the work-site early each morning to ensure we are off the mountain early before storms roll in. We will spend the day surrounded by scenic view sheds, the occasional rare plant community, and wildlife such as big horn sheep and mountain goats. Work will include a variety of constructing rock/wood check dams, adding rock cover, seeding, mulching and the potential for some planting/transplanting.