SEQUIM — One zig-zagging piece of the Olympic Discovery Trail is undergoing rehabilitation this week, thanks to Dave LeRoux and his crew of muddy volunteers.
They started work Tuesday, as rain fell hard on Railroad Bridge Park just northwest of Sequim.
“It was ugly. Ugly,” LeRoux said Wednesday, after the sky had stopped crying and turned battleship gray.
LeRoux and the Peninsula Trails Coalition, an all-volunteer bunch who’ve been building and maintaining stretches of the Olympic Discovery Trail since the 1990s, are concentrating now on making a piece of it friendlier to cyclists of all shapes and lengths.
The east ramp onto Railroad Bridge, the restored wooden trestle over the Dungeness River, is a two-legged thing with two sharp turns that prevent riders of tandem or recumbent bikes from using it. It’s not easy for a traditional single-seat bicyclist, either.
So the trails coalition, led by LeRoux, has raised money for lumber, gotten donations of time and equipment and begun widening the ramp.
Crane expected today
Affordable Crane’s Jay Ketchum plans to bring his crane to Railroad Bridge Park today to lift and lower 20-foot beams into place on the riverbank to support the ramp’s decking.
So on Wednesday, trails coalition stalwarts Bill Mueller, John Carruthers, Jim Mader and Glenn Carlson were digging trenches for the concrete footings that will support the beams.
This is LeRoux’s fourth Olympic Discovery Trail bridge project.
He and the coalition worked on the restoration of Railroad Bridge in 1992, and on the trestles across Johnson and Morse creeks, which extended the Discovery Trail from Sequim to Port Angeles.
Eventually the trail will reach across the whole North Olympic Peninsula, from Port Townsend to LaPush.
That will be thanks to the efforts of Jefferson and Clallam county planners, property owners — and innumerable hours of unpaid labor.
“It’s really a satisfying experience working with volunteers,” LeRoux said. “They don’t call in sick. They really want to work.
“They want to give something back to their community.”
Dedicated volunteers
Mueller, a member of the Thursday trail crew — a subset of the Peninsula Trails Coalition — said he and his compatriots wear T-shirts that read, “You couldn’t pay us to do this.”
Nor could you get him to explain why he does this, in the rain, cold and mud.
“We just do,” Mueller said, continuing to shovel river rocks out of his trench.
“People move to this area,” perhaps to retire, LeRoux said. “They look for something to be involved in. They find a project like this, and they’re off and running.”
LeRoux hopes to have the new ramp done next week.
It’ll be made of cedar and volunteer power — provided by the lunches LeRoux makes sure are provided after every work party.
The trails coalition raises money for such things, he added, via the Traveler’s Journal slide-show series presented each winter by local residents who’ve explored other corners of the world.
Local companies such as Affordable Crane and Quadra Engineering, which donated the Railroad Bridge ramp design work, also smooth the way for the Discovery Trail.
And there will always be other stretches of trail on which to work.
“Anybody who wants to help out is more than welcome,” to join the crew, LeRoux added.
To find out when and where the next Peninsula Trails Coalition work parties will be, phone LeRoux at 360-775-7364.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.