Join APF, Austin Comm College for Project Build A Park Sat 9-12

The tenth annual Project Build A Park, an annual event put on by Austin Community College’s office of student life in conjunction with the Austin Parks Foundation, the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Dept, Waterloo Disc Golf and Southeast Austin Trails & Greenways (SEATAG) is this Saturday, November 5th from 9 am to noon and we need more volunteers!  Guerrero-Colorado River Park is under going a big expansion but we need help in spreading mulch, picking up trash and helping cut back from vines and bamboo along the trails, the under construction disc golf course and along the shoreline of the Colorado River.

Country Club Creek Trail back in late April 2010

Future Disc Golf course Guerrero-Colorado River Park - stone was all found on site as part of a big clean-up

We’ll work from 9 am to noon, start/finish is the Montopolis Youth Sports Complex at the Grove Blvd entrance (past ACC Riverside)  Register here. Please wear long pants, closed toed shoes and bring a water bottle.

Big piles of mulch awaiting spreading

Another view of a portion of the future disc golf course

Country Club Creek Trail

Yesterday, I got a chance to check out the country club creek trail over at Guerrero-Colorado River Park and see the fruits of all of the volunteer work that has gone into building the 1.5 miles of trail by the Southeast Austin Trails and Greenways Group.  It looks amazing!

The Ultimate Recycled Benches

Our friends of SEATAG (that’s the Southeast Austin Trails and Greenways Group) who have designed and built the (so-far) 1.5 mile Country Club Creek Trail practice the ultimate in recycling.  They taken three huge concrete slabs, dumped at the park at one point and hauled them to beautiful spots along the trials under some of the bigger trees and working with a local artist and volunteers, have covered them with tiles decorated by kids at the 2007 Austin City Limits. They look great, complete with coiled rebar coming out of the ends of several of the pieces.  Here’s one from pictures we took yesterday.

 

Picture of trail building from the big volunteer day on Nov 8, 2009.

Tree Work & Trash Pickup on Country Club Creek Trail

We’re half way into our second of three weeks of tree work on Country Club Creek Trail. Carl and Jose of Natural Texas have removed lots of invasive trees, including Chinaberry trees and old hackberries that were so rotten that they were held up by green briar vines alone! I’m spending a few hours every few days picking up trash – lots of old dumps and homeless camps. I’ve found the most extensive collection of bottles and cans and plastic bags ever! Work will be continuing through next week, but the area is looking great so far. More photos on our flickr page

Tree Work at Country Club Creek Trail

Austin Parks Foundation is funding tree work along the Country Club Creek Trail, running from Kreig Fields at Guerrero-Colorado River Park south to the trailhead at S. Lakeshore and Pleasant Valley Road. We’ve hired Carl Brockman of Natural Texas to use his forestry mower to remove invasive (non-native) trees – especially Chinaberry – as well as some bamboo and a great deal of fallen trees, brush and more. The Forestry Mower cuts down trees and grinds them up into mulch on the spot, greatly reducing the amount of work it would to take to the same job with volunteers working with Parks dept staff to cut, haul, stack, chip and mulch areas. Work began on Monday, Jan 7 and will continue for up to three weeks. We beleive that this effort will reduce the amount of illegal dumping at the park, open up areas for native plants and grasses to regenerate and give some of the amazingly big cottonwood trees that we’ve uncovered room to grow.

275 volunteers at Country Club Creek Trail on Sat, Nov 17th!

The sixth annual Project Build A Park, presented by Austin Community College Office of Student Life together with the Austin Parks Foundation was a tremendous success!

We had the help of over 275 volunteers on Sat, Nov 17! Amazing!

We could not have done this without the incredible help and support from the following:

-from SEATAG (Southeast Austin Trails & Greenways) volunteers, especially Malcolm, Jim, Gale and Judy

- The Austin Community College Student Life Team led by Stacy.

- The Central Texas Trail Tamers team leaders: Derly, Patrick, Charles, Kevin, Jerry and Richard, who partnered with us to lead teams of volunteers to perform all of the tasks.

- lots of tools from the Austin Parks Foundation.

We worked from from 9 am to 12 noon to spread over 28 truckloads of road base on nearly 1/2 mile of trail, tremendous amount of trash and construction debris collected and tossed and a huge mountain of Bamboo cut back, piled and an amazing collection of cans and bottles gathered.

Photos from the top to bottom show road base being spread, bamboo being stacked high and part of our can collection.

Thanks so much to ACC for providing a band and lunch for volunteers for this sixth annual Project Build A Park – it went great!