STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – It’s 10 a.m. on a sunny September Saturday at 10,000 feet on Rabbit Ears Pass and Laraine Martin, executive director of Steamboat Springs’ trails advocacy group Routt County Riders, wipes the sweat off her brow. It’s only 60 degrees or so, but she’s moving a lot of dirt.
She’s here on National Public Lands Day, along with a cadre of volunteers and a handful of U.S. Forest Service employees, as part of a workday on Bruce’s Trail, a wintertime Nordic trail, marking the groundbreaking of the new Mad Rabbit trail system just west of the Continental Divide off U.S. 40. The group is working on a user-friendly flow trail off Bruce’s, using hand tools to establish a flat traverse across the slope.
“Words can’t really describe how good it feels to actually be clearing corri