The popular Union Creek Trail got some loving care recently and is now reopened, thanks to work crews and volunteers.

The forest trail, which is an easy route that extends 4.4 miles from the Union Creek Resort, had become overgrown and clogged by fallen trees over the years.

“It was not passable,” said Alice Hiebert, a forestry technician working for the High Cascades Ranger District in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. “It was severely overgrown and there was a lot of downed old-growth trees.”

“It all needed some love.”

Hiebert and fellow technician Meghan Schwob joined with community volunteers, a U.S. Forest Service fire crew and a Lomakatsi work crew to take on the job of clearing the trail over 13 days this past work season. They cut through 49 downed trees, reworked the surface on 1¼ miles of trail, installed five signs and cut back overgrowth, including lots of vine maple.

“This district hasn’t had a trail crew really in many years,” Hiebert said. “My coworker Meghan and I, this is our first season on the district, we just went to go check this trail out.”

“We’re like, we’re going to get this trail open,” she said. “It looks like it hasn’t been open in a long time. We heard how popular it was. That was a factor.”

About eight members of the district’s fire crew put in two days work, as did about 10 to 12 crew members with Lomakatsi, an Ashland-based nonprofit organization involved in forestry workforce training, watershed restoration and other projects. Several community volunteers helped, too.

The tools they used included shovels, chainsaws, hand saws and pruners. They also used McLeod firefighting tools, a dual-function tool that looks like a combination wide hoe and hard rake.

The trail surface work they did is called retreading — taking the trail surface down to a mineral layer for sturdy footing.

Now, the trail awaits visitors, including wintertime cross-country skiers.

“The more people use it, the more brush will be kept back,” Hiebert said.

Next year, they’d like to work on the section of the Rogue River Trail from Big Bend north of Union Creek to Boundary Springs at Crater Lake National Park. The full Rogue River Trail runs along the river from its headwaters at the park’s northwest corner to Prospect, near the district ranger station.

“We would really like to get the entire Rogue River Trail open,” Hiebert said.

The Union Creek Trail, known as Trail No. 1035, can be accessed from the Union Creek Resort, 56484 Highway 62. The trailhead is behind the resort lodge and cabin 21.

The trail generally follows Union Creek for about four miles to Union Falls, beyond which it turns north for about a half mile to a trailhead on Forest Road 610.

To get to the trailhead off of Forest Road 610, take Highway 62 about two miles east of its junction with Highway 230, then turn right on Forest Road 610 and drive about a half mile to the trailhead.