Beginning at the Fernwood Picnic Area, the water coarse of a stream has been culverted beneath Sunset Trail and the Upper Meadow, joining Palo Seco Creek at the Sinawik trailhead, having spent a hundred yards underground. Culverting a natural streambed isn't a good idea and the Friends of Sausal Creek would like to see this culvert removed. For three days in February the creek flooded, deciding to take the "overland route." The resulting erosion was far greater than anything else we saw this winter. These photos show the Lower Meadow at the Fernwood picnic site.

A single winter storm created twenty-four inches of erosion in three days, digging a trench right through the Fernwood grove of redwoods. This gully is over two feet deep in places, and is also quite wide. As a study of the park revealed, "Surface water runoff was determined to be the dominant erosion mechanism acting on the park trails." Debris, siltation, and bank failures caused by rainfall and consequential flooding is far more problematic than all the users put together on trails legal and illegal!

This picture shows seven inches of erosion over a 6-foot wide area (entirely created within the same three day period). Although redwoods benefit when floods deposit silt around their bases, there is no tree that benefits from having large amounts of earth swept away from under them. When drainage diversions impact redwood groves this extensively, in places where bikes do not go, it's difficult to claim that a bike moratorium is the most efficacious strategy to curtail channel degradation and erosion.

Fallen trees were chopped up, displaced organic material was pushed into piles, and the drain was cleared. This picture shows the corrective measures taken by the park authorities. Apparently, a tractor was used to "clean up" all the organic debris left by the flooding. While necessary, this type of clean up causes a great deal more erosion and wear-and-tear to park roads and trails than bicycles do.