Local Trails Get Love by the Buckets

Haven works the bucket brigade. (Photos by Soren Wuerth)

By Soren Wuerth

TNews Editor

A group of 30 teenagers and three adults added 20 tons of gravel to sections of the Iditarod Trail this week—all by the bucketful.

Passing orange buckets in a 600-foot bucket brigade, the city-run "Youth Employment in Parks" team had completed by Thursday much of the middle portion of the Iditarod trail that runs adjacent to Crow Creek Road.

The group added 100-feet of turnpike—gravel beds enclosed by logs—over four days, according to Kyle Kelley, Girdwood's service area manager. 

Kenny Loggins "Danger Zone" riffed from a speaker as the team worked. Seventies and 80s rock is the preferred work music genre, the teen with the speaker said.

Anika carries a stack of buckets.

Another teen, Annika Linstead, ran with her buckets back and forth along the trail. She'd accrued 12 miles on Wednesday, all of it on climbs and descents from the Middle Iditarod trailhead to the entrance to Anne's Meadow. 

As she paused on the trail Thursday, Linstead examined her watch. "That was 178 flights of stairs yesterday," the Eagle River cross-country runner said. "That was our big day."

The teens are paid for their work, which takes them to parks all over Anchorage. 

Once their project in Girdwood is through, Alaska Trails takes over trail work in Girdwood. 

Local volunteers, meanwhile, completed extensive work this spring maintaining area trails, building bridges, turnpikes and shoveling for drainage. 

Ishraka shovels from a 10-ton load of gravel.