Hello All!

As we continue to our goal of a partial reopening on February 1^st, I wanted to bring everyone up-to-date on our progress as well as share any news. This will be a weekly update from now until at least February 1^st. A point of explanation on the goal date – as a Tuesday, it will give us time to “soft open” and solve any of the problems we usually have upon our annual season opening, but complicated by this wind event. Frankly, I do have some concerns looking at the near and mid-term weather forecasts as they are warm and dry. I am hopeful since there is some precipitation in the forecast for the last few days of January and early February. Keep Ullr in your thoughts for all of our sake and interest.

With the enthusiastic and safety focused help of volunteers from all walks of life from Thursday, January 6^ththrough Monday, January 10^th we were able to reclaim Powderpuff up to Jackalope, Jackalope, March Hare to the Not Muches, Not Much, Not Much More, Jabberwocky to Not Much, the lesson hill, and the Face Flop Drop loop. Special thanks go to Nort Phillips from Eldorado at Santa Fe for his yeoman’s work for three incredible days, Bob Blair for his great attitude, hard work, and wisdom, and to Chris Michel for bringing his team up on Monday to handle the complicated effort on Not Much More.

The plan (as always, not set in stone) this coming extended work weekend is to try to recapture the rest of Jabberwocky, all of Sherwood Forest, and finally start working hard on the most utilized trail in the area, Powderpuff. We still have some very complicated and heavy work on the last stretch of March Hare after the Not Muches, but we need some larger saws. A team from Faith Mountain Fellowship Church, Red River have a couple of those larger saws and experienced wildland fire sawyers, so we may use their skills for that project. Another thing we are trying to pay particular attention are widowmakers, to which we will assign skilled sawyers and swampers.

We’ve also begun to chip away at our snowshoe trails, which look to be similarly challenging as the ski trails. So far, we’ve cleared Snowshoe Hare and are starting to work on Bigfoot. We have upper  Bigfoot cleared to just above the Jabberwocky ski trail. We also cleared the “Road Not Taken” to the point where we can have a snowshoe loop up to the cleared portion of Bigfoot.

On Thursday, January 6^th Juan Jauregui of the Carson National Forest came up with Lorenzo Herrera and Amber Ellis. Lorenzo is their Timber Sale Administrator for the CNF and Amber is a Forestry Tech on the East Zone of the CNF. They gathered more details on that trip to get a better idea of the topography, species, and volume that is there and available. He indicated that they will probably have many more trips to continue to deepen their knowledge of the area and what is on the ground. We are optimistic about our continued good relationship with the USFS and look forward to a positive experience in this part of the process.

Our fundraising efforts at https://gofund.me/2e752ca3 have brought in $20,855 of our $100,000 goal so far. We also appreciate the in-kind donations of a hefty discount at the local restaurant, Old Tymers’ Café. Also, the loaning of equipment by our volunteers and outside organizations/individuals like Southwest Nordic and Clay Moseley.

We’ve also set-up a volunteer sign-up webpage at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0f44a8aa29a7f5c16-trail . We changed the scheduled times to 9:00 a.m. through 3:00 p.m. each day as that seems to better fit all the personnel involved (except Nort, who is a beast). Thursday through Sunday will still be the pattern, but we can work with special requests, as we did with Chris Michel and his team. Most volunteers are well equipped as we have asked, but we still want to emphasize that we recommend a minimum of two pairs of gloves. While we do plan on providing lunches for everyone, sometimes our delivery of food may be delayed and we want to encourage volunteers to bring snacks/extra food and water bottles. We do have water at the base area and will bring it out to teams as they need it. 

I also want to send out our appreciation to the coverage we have received through the Santa Fe New Mexican, KTAO radio, Red River Miner, KRQE, and especially KOB. Through each of these different sources we have seen volunteer interest, fundraising increases, and overall good wishes increase from all the different stakeholders which we serve.

Thanks to all of you for your continued support and sharing of our story and our needs. We could not do this without each of you and the communities with which you work, live, and play.

All the best,

Mike Ritterhouse

EFXC General Manager

575-754-6112 office

575-770-2628 cell

29 Sangre de Cristo Dr.

Red River, NM 87558