Work Camp & volunteers fix Box Canyon Trail

Status area

_{By ELIZABETH LADEN}

ISLAND PARK — With some help from local volunteers, St. Anthony Work Camp inmates this week repaired the 2.8 mile Box Canyon Trail on the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. The trail has had a significant amount of wear, with many rocks sticking out of the ground that make walking difficult.

The Box Canyon Trail gets a lot of use from area residents, especially people who live in Last Chance and the Buffalo Summer Homes and also from anglers fishing the Henry’s Fork and people camping in a nearby Forest Service campground. It goes south from the Buffalo River Dam, south side, accessed by Riverside Drive.

The trail may some day be part of a long term project conceived around six years ago by the Island Park Gem Community Team — to join existing non-motorized trails and roads into a trail system linking Henry’s Lake and Harriman state parks and someday extending east to the Mesa Falls Recreation Area. The Gem Team used grants funds to ground truth the system, and more work on mapping the linkages still needs to be done.

Work Camp inmates cannot be photographed, but on Friday, they were sweating away long after volunteers from the Island Park Area Chamber of Commerce had left, removing rocks and smoothing out the trail with a mixture of soil and finely crushed gravel. They had been working on the trail for several days.

“The volunteers get all the glory, and we have all the guts,” joked one inmate as he pushed a wheelbarrow full of dirt and gravel up a hill.

The trail project has long involved numerous entities, including the National Forest, and the state and county Parks and Recreation departments. The Gem Team that conceived the trail idea was a joint city-chamber group formed through the state Department of Commerce. The team recently disbanded because the state cut its Gem Team program. At the Gem Team’s request, the chamber and Forest Service formed a Trail Project Committee to oversee the trail system. A key committee member is Jarrod Hansen, a trail building expert with the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.

The trail project will also need the support of private landowners, the state Highway Department, all area organizations, and the chamber.

Several years ago, some chamber board members voted to donate most of the money raised at the chamber’s annual All American Sawtelle Stampede, a fun run of several distances, to the trail project. They did this at the urging of chamber members who felt that the fun run should allocate most of its profits to a specific purpose. So far, there’s around $16,000 in the trail project account. This money can be used as matching funds for grants that will most likely be managed by the Forest Service or the state Parks and Recreation Department, depending on what part of the project is being funded.

About the St. Anthony Work Camp. The Work Camp is designed for low-risk, minimum- and community-custody male offenders. The program focus is to provide a work therapy program offering full-time, constructive, paid employment to offenders through contracted work and public service projects with government agencies, non-profit organizations and private employers. The program helps offenders develop good work habits, a positive work ethic, and marketable work skills while providing a financial resource to meet immediate and future needs.Address: 125 N. 8th West, St. Anthony ID 83445. Telephone: 208-624-3775

Box Canyon Trail. The trail is located 1 mile west of the Island Park Ranger Station. From Island Park Ranger Station head west on Riverside Drive and follow the road until you reach the Buffalo Hydro Dam.

Box Canyon #029, 2.8 miles in length, is a non-motorized trail that follows the canyon rim of the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River. This trail connects to Box Canyon Campground and provides several access points for fishing on the river. Views of the river, various plant and tree species, and occasional wildlife are seen from the trail. Various species of trees and wildflowers can be seen on the trail, as well as songbirds, waterfowl and occasional wildlife.

This is part of the online edition of Henry's Fork Country.

Have an opinion on this matter? We'd like to hear from you. Click here.