Mules make it possible: How a trail is being rerouted in Indiana's only wilderness
It's taken years of groundwork to improve a trail just south of Bloomington in Indiana's only wilderness area.
Most trails are easier to maintain or reroute than the ones in the Charles C. Deam Wilderness just south of Lake Monroe in the Hoosier National Forest. Wheeled vehicles or objects are prohibited, so Hoosier National Forest staff must depend on helicopters and mules.
The final stages of spreading out 250 tons of gravel is underway on the Cope Hollow Trail with help from staff and mules from Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Northern California. The trail is used by hikers and people on horseback, although for the past three weeks it's been two or three teams of mules walking in to work on a 1-mile reroute of a portion of the trail to a better location.
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The hope is that once the new trail section is complete, visitors' experience will improve, with more people taking the southern trail, according to Rod Fahl, a wilderness ranger who helps with the Hoosier's four mules, the only U.S. Forest Service mule team east of the Rockies.
Katy Bartzokis and Erik Cordtz, both from Shasta-Trinity, have been working on the trail in Indiana's only national forest and wilderness area for the past three weeks after driving five-days from the national forest just north of Redding, California. Six mules made the journey and are working alongside the Hoosier mules, carrying riders and heavy packs full of gravel. Bartzokis and Cordtz have witnessed the leaves changing on the trees while driving teams three miles along the Cope Hollow Trail from the Blackwell Campground to the reroute area.
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While volunteer Butch Stidam of Clear Spring rode his horse Blue as lead for one of the teams on a crisp Monday morning, Bartzokis talked about why the Forest Service uses mules instead of horses.
"They are smarter, tougher, stronger," she said while fastening a saddle on to the mule Annie. "They think logically. ... A mule will go around a tree on the wrong side once. A horse may do it every time."
Mules, a hybrid between a donkey and a horse, are strong for their size, have better feet, mental responsiveness and athleticism than a horse, she explained. During Northern California's wildfire season, mule teams support fire crews and the mules' steadiness and intelligence is a huge benefit. For the work on the Hoosier, she said they brought "the A team."
Fahl expects the trail work to continue for a couple weeks. It will be the culmination of a project first proposed and approved in 2016. In the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021, helicopters from Idaho and Illinois flew huge Kevlar bags carrying 1 ton of gravel each to the trail site, where they laid until work began this fall.
"There's a lot of prep work involved," Fahl said. First it's laying out the trail, then placing flags where it will go and then getting approval for the work.
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In September, clearing of the trail area began with small diameter trees along the path removed to create about an 8-foot wide clearing. Then the mules began to plow the forest soil. A single-board plow pulled by one mule, driven by one person with another person at the plow and another clearing obstructions, laid open the soil. Roots, rocks and other obstructions slowed the work and caused an elbow injury for one worker.
Next grading began to make a level pathway. "We want it on a hillside so the water can run off," Fahl said. "So we are creating a bench on the hillside. ... we're making it flat."
Even though it's a trail for people and horses, it's narrow and the gravel will help lessen erosion caused by hooves and feet while also allowing water to percolate into the ground.
More about the project and the wilderness
Even though the work on the trail began in 2020, the analysis for the project began in 2016. The long timeline shows the complexity, careful consideration and length of the process needed, according to Stacy Duke, forest recreation program manager with the Hoosier National Forest.
The first two phases of trail building, with helicopters and purchasing supplies, was paid for with U.S. Forest Service 10-year Trail Challenge funding. The last phase, with support from the California team, was funded by the Great American Outdoors Act.
The project is within the Charles C. Deam Wilderness, which has 36 miles of trails for hiking, backpacking and horse riding along the south side of Lake Monroe. Although designated a wilderness area in 1982, the 12,953 acres within the Hoosier National Forest was originally mostly small, subsistence farmland and remnants of the farms are still visible, from cemeteries to foundations of houses and wellheads dotted in the now mostly wooded landscape.
In total, there are 37.3 miles of trails in the wilderness. Although most wilderness areas do not have roads into their interior, the Charles C. Deam Wilderness does, in part to access family cemeteries, but also to access the Welcome Center at Brooks Cabin, the Hickory Ridge Fire Tower on Tower Ridge Road and the Blackwell Horse Camp.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Mules, helicopters needed for trail work in Charles C. Deam Wilderness
