KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – The efforts of a local group of volunteers dedicated to preserving the Highland Springs area and expanding access to the community gained public acknowledgement this past week as well as a donation to help its forward momentum.
At the Feb. 14 Board of Supervisors meeting in Lakeport, Cheri Holden of the Sierra Club Lake Group presented a check for $500 to the Lake County Public Works Department in support of the Highland Springs Trails Volunteers’ work.
“The Sierra Club is really pleased to be able to support the good work at Highland Springs,” Holden said.
Board Chair Rob Brown said the group has cut trails, brush – even some fingers.
“They’ve even managed to cut through a lot of red tape,” he said.
Mike Riley, whose wife Kim is one of the main forces behind the efforts but who couldn’t be at the presentation, said the donation came at a perfect time, as they’re planning to purchase more signage for the Highland Springs area.
Karen Sullivan, who along with Kim Riley has been a chief organizer for the group, thanked all of the volunteers who come out in the cold, the hot sun and rain because they love the area.
In 2011 the group had 800 volunteer hours over 17 public work days, Sullivan said. “So we’re out there all the time.”
County Public Works Director Scott De Leon also thanked the volunteers, noting that he values the work they are doing.
The beginning of a public-private partnership
The Feb. 14 presentation gave some public recognition to a group that has been around for a long time, in one form or another, but formally reorganized into the Highland Springs Trails Volunteers in 2010.
There currently are about 40 volunteers, including people who also belong to the Sierra Club Lake Group and the California Native Plant Society, according to Kim Riley and Sullivan.
That varied membership also contributed to the group’s name, which doesn’t focus on riding, said Riley. “We didn’t want to sound exclusive.”
The group has been working steadily for a decade to make improvements to the rugged and beautiful 3,200-acre Highland Springs Recreation Area, which contains within it a multitude of different habitats, ecosystems and watersheds.
Sullivan said they have been carrying out the maintenance with their own tools and using their own funds. “It’s all been out of pocket for 10 years for us.”
She said they started working with the county and the local Kiwanis Club on improving the trail around the park’s lake in the late 1990s
In 2001, members were invited to a county meeting on a proposal to expand the county’s trail system, she said.
In 2009 they helped gather public input for the county’s multi-use trail systems plan. The group also reported that it’s installed an information kiosk by the park’s dam.
Both Riley and Sullivan have been involved with trail clearing in other areas, and have given input on other trail plans, said Sullivan.
They said their efforts are not just about riding or trails, but protecting resources and keeping open critical fire breaks.
“These fire breaks are important,” said Sullivan.
Nonetheless, Highland Springs has long been a favorite of riding enthusiasts. The trails that transect the area were cut more than 50 years ago by hunters making their way Highland Springs on horseback, according to the group.
Sullivan, who moved to Lake County with her family in 1990, began riding at Highland Springs because it was close to her home. She and other riders would do minor trail clearing using loppers and other handheld tools in order to keep the pathways accessible.
Other than those efforts, the county wasn’t able to maintain the trails, with Riley explaining that at one point there was only about eight miles of usable trail, which tended to be overgrown.
In their 10 years on the trails, the group’s volunteers – armed with everything from handheld loppers to chainsaws – have cleared miles of trails overgrown by the area’s aggressive brush, and worked to eradicate poison oak.
“There’s huge community support for this,” said Sullivan.
Even so, Sullivan said they’ve been accused of cutting trails and policing the park, which she said is untrue.
She said the volunteers are limited in what they can do, which doesn’t include cutting new trails, only recovering old ones.
“We have not done anything without county permission,” she said.
In 2009 the volunteers joined an ongoing botanical survey to help track the rare and endangered Fritillaria Purdy lily.
Sullivan said their concern for resources and protected species has caused them to reroute around sensitive areas and species when necessary.
Protecting species and trail mapping
Riley said the volunteers started having public work days in 2007. They’ve been able to hold them once a month during the winter, and in summer they hold weekly Wednesday evening trail work and happy hours. After the work is done, they gather at the dam for snacks, potluck, drinks and “jocularity.”
Signage is the current project taking place. They’re in the first phase of installing trail signage, beginning at the dam parking area and following a trail that will be dubbed the “Boot Hill Loop,” Riley said. A fundraising effort more than a year ago brought in $1,200 that is funding the new signs.
They’ve also carried out two GPS mapping projects on the trails, with Sullivan estimating there is a total of about 30 trail miles.
The group worked with the Dunnebeck family, who had put in some of the trails decades ago for hunters, in order to identify the trails, she said.
They just completed transmitting the last GPS information on the trails to the county, which is generating maps which Riley and Sullivan will then help label.
Riley said she hopes to see maps created and distributed for use by the general public, which she said will be an important complement to the trail signs they’re now installing.
Because they spend so much time in and around Highland Springs, “We see a lot of the problems,” said Sullivan.
Those problems include illegal hunting and camping, vandalism, off-road riding violations and illegal dumps, she said. “We’ve tried to alert the county and work with the county on problems like that.”
Riley said they’ve also run across the telltale signs of marijuana growing operations, including buckets and black tubing, but haven’t confronted any marijuana farmers. As they’ve increased their coverage area of the park, they’ve found less evidence of illicit grows.
While some of the issues have been addressed, some have not, such as protecting the trails in wet winter weather, Sullivan said.
The volunteers have posted signs telling riders to keep off the wet trails; Sullivan said the signs have been ignored. They’ve also roped off trails, with county permission, only to find the ropes cut.
“We definitely have our own ideas of how we think the park should be protected,” said Sullivan, and that includes shutting the trails down in winter to riders.
They’re riding advocates but they also want to protect trail surfaces, which Sullivan said can be destroyed and made irreparable by riding during wet weather.
“It does ruin it for everybody,” she said, from hikers to riders.
Without money to winterize the trails, she suggested closure is the alternative. An article Sullivan wrote, which is posted on the Lake County Horse Council’s Web site at www.lakecountyhorsecouncil.com/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=7, suggests alternative places to ride in Lake County during winter.
She said the hope is that the county will take a firm stance on seasonal trail closures as part of a county trails management plan that currently is in progress.
Future projects, in addition to continued work on trails, including a second kiosk in the park and more signs, Riley and Sullivan said.
To get involved with the Highland Springs Trails Volunteers or for more information on their activities, contact Karen Sullivan at
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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