B10 The BulleTin • Friday, January 29, 2021
Bend Park & Recreation District’s West Bend Trail.
Trails
Continued from B1
Our trail counter data for
this year clearly shows that
more people are using the
park district trails that con-
nect to U.S. Forest Service
land.
Something that really
stands out are the 2020 num-
bers for Haul Road and West
Bend trails, pointing to how
many people use our trails
to access the national for-
est. The annual numbers are
nearly double from the previ-
ous six years. The West Bend
Trail had an 85% increase
— nearly 40,000 more trips
— over the total in 2019. The
Submitted photo
Haul Road Trail experienced
a 59% increase — just shy of
26,000 additional trail counts
— than the previous year.
Also, Shevlin Park and Ri-
ley Ranch Nature Reserve
follow this same pattern, and
both parks have had contin-
uous year over year increase
since we started counting.
Shevlin Park has two trail
counters calculating visits
on the north and south areas
of the 1,000-acre park. The
north area trail counter had a
40% increase, and the south
area had a 37% increase, total-
ing almost 35,000 more visits
than in the previous year. The
upper trail area at Riley Ranch
Nature Reserve saw more
than 41,000 additional visi-
tors — almost a 70% increase
in nature reserve explorers —
from the prior year.
Overall, trail usage was up
an average of 38% across all
of our trail counters between
2019 and 2020. Even the Lark-
spur Trail, which has been
detoured during the con-
struction project at Larkspur
Community Center, home
of the Bend Senior Center,
saw a 29% jump in use from
the year prior. This is an im-
portant east-side trail and the
numbers prove that the trail
continues to be a well-used
corridor despite partial clo-
sures. And not to be forgot-
ten is the paved Pine Nursery
Dogs
Oregon Trail of
Dreams sled-dog
tours
Continued from B1
When not working the tours
at Bachelor, Nelson has been
training the dog team with Ra-
chael and Jerry at their sprawl-
ing ranch in Alfalfa, just east
of Bend. The dogs are mostly
Alaskan husky mixes.
Rachael Scdoris has contin-
ued racing over the years, but
for the shorter, faster sprint
races, like the Stage Stop, she
figured Nelson was the better
choice for a musher.
“We just realized that for this
level of sprint racing, there is
no margin for error,” Rachael
said. “I’m a musher who makes
errors — that’s just the way it is.
So it’s better for Rafael to go.”
Scdoris was born with achro-
matopsia, a rare vision disorder
that limits her to seeing only
blurry shapes of objects more
than a few feet away and makes
her acutely sensitive to bright
light. Despite her disability, Sc-
doris, a graduate of Redmond
High School, has been mushing
since she was 3, starting with the
encouragement of her father.
Scdoris made worldwide
headlines as the first legally
blind musher to attempt the
Iditarod in 2005. In 2006 she
completed the race, plac-
ing 57th among 72 finishing
teams. She skipped the Iditarod
in 2007, and in 2008 she pulled
out of the race 941 miles into
the route. In her last Iditarod,
in 2009, Scdoris finished 45th.
Each time she raced the Idi-
tarod, she had a fellow musher
along with her as her “visual
interpreter.”
Scdoris, who with Salerno
has a 6-year-old son, Julien,
raced in the Canadian Cham-
pionship Dog Derby in Yellow-
knife, Northwest Territories,
three straight years from 2016
to 2018. Last year, she com-
peted in the local Bachelor
Butte Dog Derby near Bend.
Both those races were canceled
this year due to the COVID-19
Park trail that saw an 80% in-
crease or almost 18,000 more
visits in 2020 than in 2019.
Trail counters are not with-
out limitations. In the past
year, we’ve had at least one of
our trail counters experience
considerable vandalism that
resulted in unreliable data. It
is rare that the counters get
damaged, but someone dam-
aged the end of the scope lens.
We’ve also discovered issues
that aren’t human-caused. Tall
grass in the sun or grass blow-
ing in the wind can trigger
the counter unintentionally.
This is part of the challenge of
finding the sweet spot for trail
counter locations.
Despite these challenges,
The Oregon Trail of
Dreams offers sled dogs
tours at Mt. Bachelor ski area
west of Bend.
For more information or
to book a tour, visit otdsled-
dogs.com or call 1-800-829-
2442.
Rafael Nelson, left, and
Rachael Scdoris with lead
sled dog, Tolstoy.
Dean Guernsey/For The Bulletin
pandemic. The Stage Stop and
the Iditarod, which starts in
early March, are two of the
few sled dog races that are still
scheduled for 2021.
Scdoris’ last Iditarod was
nearly 12 years ago, but she has
not ruled out a potential return
to the world’s most famous sled
dog race. For now, though, she
is content running the sled-dog
tours at Bachelor and helping
Nelson to train the dogs.
e e
Julie Brown is the communication and
community relations manager for
Bend Park and Recreation District.
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“Next year is the 50th run-
ning of the Iditarod, so that
would be an interesting time
to come back for sure,” Scdoris
said. “I miss the Iditarod, and
it would be fun to go back. But
training for these stage races
is SO much easier. But it’s still
hard, and we’ve worked incred-
ibly hard to build up this stage
team.”
e e
Reporter: 541-383-0318,
mmorical@bendbulletin.com
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my co-workers at the park
district use the information
from the trail counters to bet-
ter understand use patterns
and to plan ahead for future
crossings, connections and
new trails. The high use in
2020 definitely tells us that
our goal of developing 47
more miles of trail by 2028 is
on target with how commu-
nity members are using trails
for recreation and transpor-
tation.
For more information
about park district trails, visit
www.bendparksandrec.org/
parks-trails.
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