Kalispell volunteer keeps Crane Mountain trails passable

Heat pulls the scent from orange honeysuckle and wild roses, leaving it hanging above the partially damp earth that leads up Crane Mountain.

Flathead Lake looms between tree trunks and branches, always partially covered by vegetation. Ron Cron’s tire tracks are visible, imprinted in the mud, few and far between along the Beardance trail. The tracks are from yesterday, the day before, last week and maybe even last month.

He’s worked on Crane Mountain almost every weekend since May of 2011 to upgrade the Crane Creek, Phillips and Beardance trails.

After a hard day of clearing brush, laying rocks or creating log walk ways, he puts on his pack, which holds all the tools he needs — a pulaski, a chainsaw, his hard hat, and workgloves. He puts on his helmet, hops on his mountain bike and carefully makes his way back down the trail, with his white terrier Sadie following close behind him.

Cron’s almost done with the work he volunteered to complete on the Beardance trail and he’s currently working on water crossings near the intersection of the Crane Creek and Beardance trails.

Andrew Johnson of the Forest Service’s Swan Lake Ranger District said Cron is authorized to do the work under a volunteer-agreement with the Forest Service. Cron is essentially performing trail maintenance on existing trails in the Flathead National Forest system, anything from sawing downed trees to diverting water from the trail.

And water has long been an issue on the Crane Mountain trails.

“The trail system is notoriously wet,” Johnson said. “You start to climb higher and higher and it just gets muddier and boggier.”

Unfortunately, not all the water can be easily diverted off the trail because they aren’t just streams for run-off, they are natural springs. Cron has installed several walk-logs along the trail. Each log is found on or near the trail, hand-sawed, hand-notched and slowly ratcheted into place by Cron. Johnson said the logs bring the trail up higher, out of the water and are perfect for the multiple purposes the trail is used for.

The trails Cron is authorized to work on are used by horseback riders, mountain bikers and hikers alike.

“It’s just one of the tools in our toolbox that we can use to solve problem trail-tread,” Johnson said. “It’s also something that’s fun for bikes, which is consistent with the Forest Service management plan of that area.”

And Cron is careful to place walk-logs as close to the existing trail as possible. He goes to the trouble of making a space wide enough for horseback riders to pass through, diverting water away from the higher part of the trail and installing walk-logs above the muddier portions of the same section of trail. The section he’s working on right now is just above the Beardance trail on the Crane Creek trail. The aroma of freshly cut wood is still strong, and the area where Cron cleared brush is visible, but in a couple of weeks his work will be barely noticeable.

While Cron is an avid hiker, his passion is mountain biking. Searching for a good trail ride near Kalispell is what got him into volunteering to do trail maintenance in the first place.

He used to travel to places like Spokane to find trail rides. But he wanted something near Kalispell that kids could potentially ride on, and something that could be a potential draw to the area for mountain bikers.

“It’s a very good work out riding a mountain bike down a hill,” Cron said. “We’re raising a very unhealthy next generation and I thought, ‘here’s an answer.’ It may not be the answer but it’s something.”

When he found the Crane Mountain trails he thought they were perfect.

They’re steep and technical so a mountain bicycle can’t make it down too fast. There’s a road the trails connect to at the upper end, so bikers can shuttle to the top and ride to the bottom.

And once he found it, he wanted to begin working right away.

“I always tell people ‘be passionate about something,’” Cron said. “And mountain biking is something I’m passionate about.”

Unfortunately his passion took him a couple steps beyond what the Forest Service enables their volunteers to do, and Cron freely admits that he made some mistakes. He began building trail before the Swan Ranger District gave their okay.

Johnson said with any new volunteer there is always a learning curve. It takes a while to understand the parameters the Forest Service requires for trails and the constraints a volunteer needs to work under.

“We both learned from that experience and now he’s doing a fantastic job with those trails,” Johnson said. “He’s been extremely dedicated.”

Dedication is something that Cron takes seriously. It’s about doing something to make a difference and for Cron the difference he will make is enabling more forms of recreation in the hills along Flathead Lake a few miles south of Woods Bay.

He predicts trailwork on the three trails he’s allowed to work on will be done by the end of summer and Cron would like to extend his trailwork to the full Crane Mountain system.

He’s waited three years for approval on his proposal and will most likely have to wait a little longer for a decision.

“What will be impressive is if the Forest Service and us can get together to build something for our next generation,” Cron said.