Alaska State Parks is making a final push to complete improvements on the Battery Point trail and needs volunteers to help it happen Saturday.

Haines state park ranger Travis Russell said 103 hours of volunteer time are required to fulfill a $28,000 grant that has paid for recent improvements.

“This will close out the volunteer time mandated under the grant. We have an August 31 deadline for finishing the trail. This will do the majority of it,” Russell said.

Volunteers on Saturday will lay gravel along an about 700 feet of recently built beachside trail and cut back brush there. Work will include moving gravel in buckets and wheelbarrows and doing some drainage work.

Work also may involve laying gravel and brushing about 200 feet of a spur trail leading to the top of Mount Riley.

Volunteers should meet at Battery Point trailhead at 9 a.m. and should bring their own work gloves, boots and drinking water. Tools will be provided.

Work will end at noon with free pizza for volunteers. For more information, contact the parks office at 766-2292.

Future work on the trail includes replacement of signage and brushing the trail to Mount Riley summit.

Although regular users of the trail say that recent improvements – including eliminating muddy and rooted sections – has significantly increased use of the trail, ranger Russell said he doesn’t yet have figures to demonstrate that.

Russell installed an electronic “counter” to measure trail use in February and said the number of one-way trips on the trail increased from 750 in the middle of winter to more than 1,000 in March to about 2,500 this month. (As the trail is a dead-end, he divides numbers of counts by two to estimate numbers of actual users.)

The counter registered 148 one-way trips last weekend.

The counter helps his office justify work on the trail and the information it gathers can be used for securing additional grants, Russell said.

Russell said mountain bikers have discovered the trail’s new, smooth surface. “It’s not built to mountain bike specs, but (mountain biking) is not restricted by regulation.”

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