Volunteers complete years-long effort to build connector trail

LAZY MOUNTAIN — There’s nothing lazy about the effort it took to build a three-mile connector to the popular Lazy Moose Trail up Lazy Mountain.

For seven solid days, a group of nine enthusiasts with the American Hiking Society slept in tents, worked in the rain and developed calluses over their blisters carving out the final 8/10 of a mile of the trail. The work culminated a more than four-year mission to build the trail by the Valley Mountain Bikers and Hikers club. The new trail is a more family friendly connector with a mild elevation grade connecting the parking lot at the base of Lazy Mountain to the Lazy Moose, said Joe Ortner, a member of the club.

“It’s finished, and it’s in really good shape,” Ortner said. “Trails are always in some kind of state of ‘perfect,’ ‘could use a little more work here’ or ‘needs some maintenance.’ I’m just thrilled that we’re done to the parking lot. The previous three years we worked on an uptrack that intersected the Morgan Horse Trail. From the parking lot, it was a little difficult to find. It wasn’t very intuitive, there weren’t any maps. We were getting some traffic on it, but we knew we needed to connect to the parking lot.”

That connection may seem a simple task, but blazing three miles of new trail through the Alaska forest is a challenge. While the club and various volunteers and interns have worked on it for the past four years, the trail was conceived before then with club members spending about 18 months before that “stomping around the brush looking for a good route,” Ortner said.

The final work by the American Hiking Society volunteers finished Monday, completing a nine-day adventure that saw them sleeping in tents at Mat River Park courtesy of the Mat-Su Borough and sloshing through some rainy working conditions.

“Right now, the weather’s beautiful,” said volunteer Mary Chayka-Crawford, a Michigan resident. “But we had a lot of rain. And when you’re outside camping and eating all your meals there … well, you have to deal with it. It’s a little challenging, but look at the trail now? It’s beautiful.”

As an American Hiking Society member, Chayka-Crawford, a former world-class bodybuilder, has enjoyed hiking for years and takes volunteer vacations like this to see the world and foster the sport.

The new trail “is really nice,” she said. “It’s supposed to be family friendly and accessible and allow some people who may not have been able to hike there to get out and enjoy it.”

And while she has spent considerable time working on trails, “this was the first time building a brand new trail, not just a clean-up,” Chayka-Crawford said. “It’s challenging, and you can rake and rake and lop and rake and rake. I’ve done this for quite a few years in many different places. I love it here. We got nine people out here for seven solid days and now that that part’s done, the locals can maintain it.”

The volunteer group loves hiking so much, most spent their off days enjoying some of the Valley’s other hiking trails, including an ascent up Matanuska Peak.

“Some of us summated to the top of Lazy Mountain, too,” said Terri Huntington, a fourth-grade teacher from Beacon, N.Y. “And some of us almost got there. I was in the ‘almost got there’ group. It’s a beautiful trail and we made it more accessible to families and children. That’s our whole mission.”

That’s the feedback Ortner likes to hear.

“Our club’s put a lot of effort in,” he said. “We also built a couple of miles of single-track in Crevasse Moraine that is as good as any in Southcentral Alaska. We built this alternative route on Lazy Mountain that, instead of an about 35 percent grade is about a 17 percent grade. It’s a little bit more of a stroll. We’re really excited to be putting more trails in over the coming years.”

For Wilma Messenger of New York, her trip to Alaska was her first volunteer vacation, and she said it won’t be her last.

“It was just fabulous, awesome. I loved it,” she said of working on the trail.

Was it better than a vacation at the beach?

“We’ll, I don’t know about that,” she said. “I’m a sun freak, so Alaska weather isn’t quite what it is at the beach, but I have a greater sense of accomplishment, and the hosts were fantastic.”

The message Messenger hopes others will take from the American Hiking Society’s example is simple community service.

“Get out, give back. That’s it,” she said. “We love to hike and we feel like it’s our way of giving back. Now that we’re done, I feel strong, I feel powerful. I’ve hiked for years and years and it never occurred to me how much work it took building those trails that I took for granted. Now that I’ve had to create a trail, I will never look at a trail the same way again.”

She also said she feels energized to get back to her everyday life, even after a week of hard labor.

“Well, I’ve got the blisters and sore muscles to prove it, but it’s a great way to see the world,” Messenger said.

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.