NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – An overland trail to connect Pope Creek with Putah Creek in Napa County has been in the works for a number of years, and Tuleyome successfully finished bushwhacking through this new 5.5 mile trail in April.

The new Pope-to-Putah Trail still needs a bit of finessing and signage needs to go up, but as trail building leader Eric “Bam Bam” Barnett said, “It’s a cool hike regardless.”

The trail features some panoramic views of both Pope Creek and Putah Creek along with a large meadow for picnicking.

Wild flowers are in abundance in the spring time, and there are a lot of native plants, insects, birds and other wildlife for viewing and photographing year-round.

During one excursion along the trail, for example, volunteers came across Indra Swallowtail Butterfly caterpillars in the rocky areas around the meadow.

Tuleyome Board President, Andrew Fulks, recalled: “The P2P was the first trail I worked on, where I conceived of it, designed the alignment, and then worked it through the Bureau of Land Management process for approval. It got delayed for a variety of reasons, then once I was on the Berryessa Peak Trail I didn't have time to get back on it. That's where Bam Bam came in, and he ran with it. So I'm hugely grateful to him for his dedication to finishing it!”

“I remember all the pushing through solid brush, trying to plot the route location with GPS, while having zero visibility. In particular through the 'narrows', a 200-foot wide corridor connecting the main public land blocks,” Fulks adds. “We had to be super precise in order not to trespass. After we built the trail you can see on Google Earth that we nailed the route and stayed entirely within the corridor. That was really satisfying.”

Building the trail was sometimes exhausting and treacherous: creating switch-backs, building steps, dealing with wildlife (including a happy scorpion), and bushwhacking through stands of poison oak with roots and stalks that were nearly 6-inches in diameter.

Bam Bam and his crew used a variety of hand tools and some real innovations – like having llamas carry the heavier loads on some trips, and attacking one end of the trail by canoe – to get it all done. 

Barnett says it couldn’t have done without his stalwart volunteers “Rudi, Doug, Gloria, David, Jack, Curt, Dmitry, Francesca, Betsy and Robert. You guys rock!”

Tuleyome says the main take-away from this trail project is that it's part of a larger vision that Tuleyome is helping to create.

The organization saw a small block of public land and envisioned it as part of a larger regional trail system.

This trail is the first part of that system, leveraging the easy access to the public land from Pope Canyon Road, into miles of new trails for the public.

Fulks said, “We put our expertise in getting administrative approvals, together with our ability to do on-the-ground construction, to make it happen. Now, everyone can enjoy it. It's one of the major reasons why people should support our organization. We do very real and tangible things for people that they can enjoy.”

More information on the trail, photos and detailed directions to the trailhead will be going up onto the Tuleyome Web site within the next month or so at www.tuleyome.org .

Tuleyome is a nonprofit conservation organization based in Woodland, Calif.