Tag Archives: Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition

Our World – Turkey Mountain Work Day

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Getting directions and instructions

Early Saturday morning a couple dozen volunteers gathered at Turkey Mountain for a joint project between the RiverParks Authority, who administers the Mountain, the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition, and the Herman and Kate Kaiser YMCA located at the far northwest reaches of Turkey Mountain.

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Off we went to the work site. We had to pack all the tools about a mile to the new trail. Kudos to the guys who pushed the wheel barrows.

The YMCA has shut down to totally renovate their facility and are opening up this summer. It’s going to be great and one of the things they wanted was more defined and easier to hike trails to connect their property with the rest of Turkey Mountain. The existing trails are badly eroded and unmarked and many of their day campers who go off hiking get lost.

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We broke up into three groups or so. Somebody had taken a gas powered blower and blew the leaves off the proposed trail route, earlier the route had been flagged. The people who made the route did a good job. There was very little confusion about what we were supposed to be doing.

So the Riverparks staff and a few of the officers from the Wilderness Coalition mapped out a new trail that should make everybody happy. Y daycampers, and the many hikers and mountain bikers that use the trail. It features some switchbacks which should reduce erosion problems.

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No trees were sacrificed for the new trail! Some saplings and brush got removed.

Everybody grabbed shovels, picks, saws, loppers and got to work and we got the new trail pretty much done in a few hours. People started using the new trail while we were in the middle of building it.

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A mystery. We found this whole with a dryer duct snaking out and a ladder going down. Apparently pretty deep. An old meth lab? Maybe, moonshiners used to be active on the mountain back in the day.

It’ll take some finishing touches but they started putting up my trail markers right away.

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Blocking off the old trail using the materials at hand.

And we spent some time closing off the old badly eroded trail with fallen branches. It needs to heal.

We celebrated our work with a few adult beverages in the parking lot afterward. Everybody was very proud of the work done. It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning.

So this is me working on the trail. I stole the photo from the Urban Wilderness Coalition’s facebook page. Hopefully I won’t go to jail.

And up pops a map on a facebook page showing the old and closed routes. I am stealing this map also. I am leading quite the life of crime lately. Anyway you can see the new route is longer, not near as steep, and with switchbacks. Hopefully erosion will be more easily controlled on the new route.

New Trail Route on Turkey Mountain

I am linking with Our World Tuesday

Our World – In the Woods

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Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness

This past weekend I lucked out and got to for two short hikes into some woods. The first hike was at Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness. I go there frequently and Saturday I loved it. It was overcast although warm. I love dark and moody. That doesn’t mean that I am a dark and moody person. At least I don’t think it does.

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Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness

I was actually kind of happy. I had just been asked to join the Advisory Board of the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition and had accepted. TUWC are the group of people that got together when Simon Malls wanted to build an outlet mall on Turkey Mountain (of all places!!!!) and got the community outraged and ended up convincing Simon to go build their stupid outlet mall somewhere else. Talk about a David and Goliath situation.

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Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness

Anyway, they are not a militant environment organization and are into positive things so I am honored to be part of the organization. The Advisory Board of course is mainly honorary but I plan on redoubling the volunteering and advocacy that I have been doing.

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Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness

Turkey Mountain isn’t much of a mountain and it isn’t that big, about two miles by one mile, but it is special.

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Broken Arrow Sports Park

On Sunday, I went geocaching at some soccer fields at the Tulsa suburb of Broken Arrow. Little known fact is that many soccer fields are bordered by woods that separate them from surrounding neighborhoods. These are forgotten pieces of woods by everybody little neighborhood kids and geocachers. The going is a little rough because there are no trails and lots of nettles, stickers, and thorns.

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Tree with a frog face mocking me for not finding a nearby geocache.
Broken Arrow Sports Park

I only found one of the three geocaches I was looking for. One appeared to be beyond the park boundary behind a tall metal fence. A quick check on my iphone showed that it looked to be part of a private estate. I love geocaching and outlaw hikes but out and out trespassing on somebody’s home place? Count me out! So that was a big did not find on that one.

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So I looked for three and found only this one. It is kind of like fishing though. If you caught fish every time you cast your line they wouldn’t call it fishing, they would call it catching! To me, finding caches is fun but the major fun is the looking. (If you want to know what geocaching is check this video.) Be assured there are two types of people in this world, those who are on fire about geocaching, and those who don’t get it.

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#SufferingForMyArt – don’t pity me, totally self inflicted.

Those edge pieces of woods are pretty neglected. I soaked my legs and shorts with DEET and was wearing a treated shirt but the thorns did a number on my legs. You know something, I don’t feel the cuts when they happen. I call it “suffering for my art.”

So I am chilled out this past week, two times in the woods. How was your weekend?

I am linking with Our World Tuesday, come join us!!

Turkey Mountain Cleanup Day and the George Kaiser Family Foundation Purchases the Simon Malls Tract

Over 120 people of all ages showed up  for the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition‘s Winter Cleanup Day on a beautiful Saturday morning. We picked up trash, lopped off limbs, seeded, and shaped trails for several hours this morning.

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I worked with John and Faith on the lower portion of the blue trail. I had some loppers (that is what I call them) with me and I was exhausted at the end of a mere two hours. I left them to go fetch Logan and they were still going strong. I like pruning branches in the woods. When I prune at home I have to bundle everything up just right for the city to pick them up. Up on the mountain I just toss the branches I cut deeper into the woods.

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And a week ago we got some great news on the future of Turkey Mountain. The George Kaiser Family Foundation has purchased the 60 acres on the west side of the mountain that was slated to be developed by Simon Properties into an outlet mall. The foundation owns another 200 acres of land on the mountain and the new tract will be used to expand the footprint of the public wilderness area.  It is a win/win. Simon Malls decided to build the mall on a more appropriate site and the private landowners of the 60 acres got paid for the value of the land that we users of the mountain enjoyed at their expense.

So it has been a great week for those of us that love Turkey Mountain.

Keep Turkey Wild!

 

Simon Malls Withdraws Proposal to Put an Outlet Mall on Turkey Mountain

Wagon Wheel Lake

Wagon Wheel Lake on Turkey Mountain

Great news for those of us who love Turkey Mountain. The City of Tulsa announced that Simon Property Group has formally withdrawn their proposal to build an outlet mall on Turkey Mountain and will pursue building the shopping center in the Tulsa suburb of Jenks. I love that Simon came to their senses. Building a shopping center on the mountain was a very stupid idea for a bunch of reasons. Kudos to a lot of people and organizations and especially the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition for getting this stopped. It is not often in Oklahoma that the people step up and say no to big business on something dumb like this. Their efforts got a lot more people into the park which made things kind of crowded sometime but I think people realized what a treasure we whad.

Tulsa World Article Tulsa Frontier Article

Yogi’s Den Previous Posts on the Outlet Mall

KTUL.com – Tulsa, Oklahoma – News, Weather