Carson City trails proposal delivered

After years of work, the Eagle Valley Trail Committee (EVTC) presented its draft report on Carson City trails.

The EVTC recommendations include abandoning and realigning several trails in Centennial Park and connecting existing trails there to Washoe State Park, adopting Longview Trail in Kings Canyon and connecting it to the southern access point of the Ash to Kings Trail, and to purchase or secure easements for trail use in Ash Canyon.

“There is a huge piece of the trail missing over there,” said Jeff Potter, who with Mark Kimbrough presented the EVTC report during a joint meeting of the Open Space Advisory Committee and the Parks and Recreation Commission on Tuesday.

The report is the result of more than two years of volunteer work assessing and developing an inventory of 45 miles of single-track trails within the Carson City urban interface.

The area encompasses Ash Canyon, Kings Canyon, Centennial Park, C-Hill, Silver Saddle Ranch, Riverview Park, Ambrose, V & T, Prison Hill, Mexican Dam/Mexican Ditch, Lakeview and Morgan Mill.

The work included two public workshops, a public survey and discussions with all the various land owners on which the trails cross, including Carson City, Western Nevada College, the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, and the Nevada Division of State Lands.

“That was one of the biggest coups of this project, getting State Lands support,” said Kimbrough.

The goal is to incorporate the main recommendations of the report into Carson City’s Unified Pathways Master Plan (UPMP) published in 2007.

“It’s a very large document to digest. We want to take portions of it and bring it forward as an amendment to the UPMP,” said Jennifer Budge, director, Parks, Recreation and Open Space.

The two committees voted to direct staff to work with EVTC and bring back an amendment to the pathways master plan in the fall.

The full, 116-page report is available online at the EVTC web site at carsoncitytrails.org.

The two committees also heard a brief presentation from Parker Lehmann on his Eagle Scout project to clean up and repaint the C on C Hill.

He and a group of volunteers plan to go there on June 10 to do most of the work.

“After reaching the C, the other boys along with myself will weed and move rocks back into place. We also need to remove vegetation growing on the site. I will then come back with an air compressor and use donated paint to paint the C,” read part of Lehmann’s presentation.

Lehmann is the son of Parks and Recreation Commission member Sean Lehmann.