BEND, OR – The Deschutes Trails Coalition is pleased to announce awards totaling nearly $40,000 for our annual Small Projects Grant program. This program funds trail-related projects within the Deschutes National Forest.
Congratulations to this year’s recipients: Friends of Central Cascades Wilderness (FCCW), Sisters Trails Alliance (STA), Central Oregon Trail Alliance (COTA)- Bend Chapter, Meissner Nordic Ski Club, Central Oregon Nordic Club (CONC), and the Deschutes National Forest.
Eight projects were selected to be funded:
- Improving winter trail accessibility for persons with disabilities at Wanoga, Swampy and Meissner Sno-Parks
- Purchase of a new router with which to make wooden routed trail signs made locally by a skilled volunteer
- For the Whychus Creek area: volunteer and training support, education and signage, and trail use counters to support required use monitoring and the stewardship and preservation of this area
- New high-quality maps at popular mountain bike trail access points throughout the West Bend area
- New signs and ski trail markers, and construction of reroutes and new trail segments to improve the navigation of the snowshoe and un-groomed ski trail network accessed from 5 popular Sno-Parks along Cascade Lakes Highway.
- Protection of a repeatedly vandalized and archeologically sensitive site through the decommissioning of a user-created trail accessing it, as well as physical barriers
- Addressing management issues along the Phil’s Trailhead access road by delineating areas of appropriate use and supporting re-vegetation of denuded areas
- Replace aging trail signs within the network of trails around Black Butte
Project work will occur between August 2022 and September 30, 2023.