‘Handymen and women of the outdoors’
Colorado Addicted Trailbuilders Society celebrates 15 years in Colorado
Members of the Colorado Addicted Trailbuilders Society walked onto the trail of the Old St. Louis Natural Area on a sunny Thursday afternoon, a group of natural surgeons ready to prepare the local trails to ensure they are ready for the flood of residents looking to get outside as the temperature warms. But this year was special, it was noteworthy; it was the 15th year they had been in operation.
“We are sort of like the handymen of the outdoors,” said founder Bob Johnson.
CATS operates as a volunteer-based nonprofit trail building organization striving to provide “quality trail building support to local government and environment agencies in the Northern Colorado area,” according to the group’s website.
Volunteers, supported by a group of dedicated CATS leaders, take to local trails with “only hand tools and pure muscle” throughout the spring and into the fall or winter depending on the snow to make sure trails are well designed and well kept, working to “keep these gorgeous pathways to nature fun, safe and enjoyable for generations to come,” according to the website.
The founding of the CATS
CATS has been operating in Colorado since 2007, beginning in Colorado Springs. Bob Johnson said the society was formed when the city of Colorado Springs cut the budget for the Parks and Recreation department, greatly impacting the workforce.
Johnson said this left the city’s parks “stripped of maintenance,” something that he did not want to take lying down.
So, he and another resident stayed up late into the night, maintaining trails around the city to make sure they were walkable for local residents. Quickly the movement grew, and the group that would eventually become CATS gathered more and more members.
In 2012, the organization moved north when Bob Johnson and his wife Connie, two of the original founders, moved to Loveland for work. While they were starting in new territory with new contacts, CATS was able to plant itself into the trail system quickly and had grown a long list of volunteers by 2022.
“We work right here in the Northern Colorado sector from the borderline of Wyoming to about Longmont,” Bob Johnson said.
Connie Johnson said the group is expecting to welcome in a large number of volunteers this year, with many signing up to come out for scheduled events. “It’s going to be a busy year,” she said. The group officially became a 501c3 nonprofit in 2016 and brought Brandon Smith on as president.
“It has been great,” he said. “We started out as a small group that was basically a few friends who would go out to projects. We were basically supporting one or two agencies around (northern Colorado). Now we… support about six different agencies and work across 60 to 80 projects a year.”
CATS’ work and its volunteers
Over the years the group has partnered with the city of Loveland, city of Fort Collins, the U.S. Forest Service and many others. Through these partnerships, the group has constructed and maintained a number of paths in the area, including a majority of the soft surface trails in Loveland. Their work includes the Mariana Butte Trail System in Loveland.
Bob Johnson said their group works entirely off of volunteer work from the community and ranges from those who simply love the outdoors to those looking
for some exercise and even those fulfilling some community service requirements.
He said that CATS can take someone off the street who has never done any trail work in the past and “train them to be very proficient in pretty short order.”
“A lot of people say it is giving back because they walk the trails a lot and they enjoy them,” he said. “They feel like at some point in their life they need to give back, so they join a club like ours to put in some sweat equity and give back to the trail or Mother Nature or the citizens of the town.”
Volunteers can come out to what the group calls a trail whacking, when the group takes to local trails for whatever needs to be done, whenever they like; they could be putting down crusher fine to even out the trail for better walking and area sustainability all the way up to constructing an entire trail from scratch. The more whacks they come to, the more knowledgeable they become and the more they are able to have an impact on the trail.
“Once we do one with them and they show up more regularly it is like a SEAL team,” he said. “You show up and we go to work.”
And the work these volunteers do is taken incredibly seriously by those involved, working tirelessly to ensure the trails are not only functional, but just as beautiful and natural as the area they cut through.
“It is like a surgical cut through nature,” Bob Johnson said. “We take pride in hiding our cuttings and stuff so it looks like the trail is always there. We make them so they are sustainable.”
The group went out for their first whack of the year Thursday afternoon, working on the Old St. Louis Natural Area trails throughout the afternoon and into the early evening.
Volunteers new and old came out for this first whack to put in some hard work, spending time in the sun to do crusher fine work along the trail to make it even and easy to walk on; hikers even started hitting the trail as volunteers finished up their work.
For some, volunteering offers a chance to escape to the outdoors after so many years of working indoors.
“I spent most of my working life looking out the window wishing I was outside,” said Diane Burton, who started volunteering after she retired last year. “Once I retired I could work outside.”
Scott James, a longtime volunteer who is also in charge of Loveland-specific projects, said the work is great to allow residents to come out and use the trails they are designing, creating and maintaining
“I’ve hiked my whole life, so this is giving back to something I love very much,” said Rod Randol, a former field director and volunteer.
Dean Sindorf, who is one of the CATS’ longest-standing volunteers in Loveland, said that CATS has done so much work around Loveland “it’s crazy.”
“When Marilyn (Hilgenberg) needs work on trails they call CATS,” he said.
Hilgenberg, open lands and trails division manager for the Loveland Parks and Recreation Department, said that it has been incredible to work with CATS as they design, create and maintain trails around Loveland. She said they have been an instrumental part in several projects and have proven their dedication to the outdoors and enjoyable recreation for many years.
She said she has also had the pleasure of working out in the field with them in the past, adding she was impressed with the skill set and pride they take in their work.
“They are number one,” she said. “Loveland wouldn’t have a lot of these soft surface things … with the existing budget if it weren’t for their commitment.”
15 years down, more to go
But with the future of trail building on the horizon, the group is excited to continue offering a great service for those looking to volunteer alongside those excited to enjoy Northern Colorado’s outdoors.
“It’s been extremely rewarding,” Connie Johnson said. “It’s great to see everyone get out here and see the smile on people’s faces when they see it finished.”
Smith said that the way the group goes about utilizing its volunteers has prompted calls and requests from other agencies on how to use volunteer work as effectively as CATS, adding they have “seen this revolution” of community members wanting to help out.
He added their group functions as a great way to bridge budget gaps for cities and organizations to keep natural spaces open and beautiful.
“With CATS and other organizations we work with, having volunteers and boots on the ground and people willing to … help keep our natural spaces open and … usable creates a great benefit to the community because they can go and recreate in them, or they can leverage them to get out and get active,” he said, adding without organizations like CATS there may be a point where residents could lose access to their favorite outdoor trails.
“We are a really great group,” Bob Johnson said. “You either come out one or two times a year or you come out every time, it doesn’t matter to us. We always say our group is like a buffet. You choose what you want.”