If you haven't been out in the Avenues foothills lately, do it soon so you can enjoy the new trails that the Salt Lake City Public Lands Division has built and is building while the grass is green, the flowers in bloom, and the mountains white. Below is a shot this morning of one of the new flow trails put in above Morris Meadow and 18th avenue.
Information on what the are doing is available at https://www.slc.gov/parks/trails-natural-lands/fts/, with the latest information on their blog at https://www.slc.gov/parks/trail-updates-in-slcs-foothills-natural-area/. Many trails opened last Friday and. as illustrated by the image below, they include multiuse trails (green; hiking and biking in both directions), hiking only (brown), hiking and uphill biking (orange), and downhill biking (black).
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| https://www.slc.gov/parks/trail-updates-in-slcs-foothills-natural-area/ |
The red trails are old trails that are now closed. I am not sure if that's permanent or temporary.
The trails are posted with signs like the ones below, indicating the approved usage. In this case, hiking and uphill biking is permitted, but downhill biking is not.
The city has also posted more detailed signs, but I've noticed most people don't read those and they are not bilingual. It is going to take a bit of time for people to get used to these new designations. I've seen both mountain bikers riding hiking only trails and hikers and runners on downhill only trails. I've spoken with several and they all confess confusion and I walked on one of the closed red trails a few days ago without recognizing it had been shut down. Let's obey signage and work on education to avoid conflicts, injuries, and trail decay.
Beyond that, enjoy! I look forward to more new trails opening in the Avenues Twin Peaks and Dry Fork areas in the coming weeks.
Thanks for posting this. I read the master plan for the BST-area trails last year but didn't imagine they'd be done with anything yet. The foothills area needed a lot of work given how much use it sees.
ReplyDeleteThat 19th Ave flow trail looks great.
I'm also excited to see new trails, especially direction specific. I've been following this development for quite awhile and something I kept asking but never heard the answer to was how they plan on maintaining these new trails when they couldn't maintain the existing trails. Hopefully there is a plan for that in place.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm curious to see how the trails hold up and are maintained. Ridership continues to climb.
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