Chestnut Mountain Trail Opens
Have you ever driven Bozeman Pass and dreamed of hiking up past the dramatic rock spires south of I-90?  Now you can, thanks to 10 years of conservation work by GVLT, the Trust for Public Land, Gallatin National Forest and the Schmidt family, plus a summer of trail building by the Forest Service, Southwest Montana Climbers Coalition & GVLT.  The new Chestnut Mountain and Frog Rock trails are now open, with access from Trail Creek Road just south of the I-90 Trail Creek exit- only a few minutes drive from downtown Bozeman.  The trails are the product of a conservation deal that protected over 2,000 acres of critical habitat in the Bozeman Pass wildlife corridor - made possible by funding from the Gallatin County Open Space Bonds and Federal Land & Water Conservation Fund.  The trail also crosses GVLT's first conservation easement, donated in 1991 by Gertrude Baker. To view a trail map and learn more about this landmark trails and conservation project, download our Chestnut Mountain flier.

Major East-West Paved Trail Finally Under Construction
The last week of September, the City of Bozeman broke ground on a critically important paved trail that will link the MSU campus to Bozeman Pond, the Mall and the Bozeman Gateway commercial development.  GVLT got this project started more than five years ago.  Over the last several years, City Parks Director Ron Dingman has taken the lead in finally getting it built.  Creating safe trail connections within our community is one of GVLT's highest priorities, and creating safe trail between Bozeman's northwest and southeast areas has been one of the most needed and most challenging connections to achieve.  The new trail will run along the south side of College and Huffine from 11th to Fowler where it will cross Huffine and continue on the north side to Ferguson.  A spur on the east side of Fowler will connect to Bozeman Pond.  To learn more about the story behind this project, read the cover story from GVLT's Spring 2005 newsletter. 

Unfortunately, there is bad news about the important funding source that made this project possible.  The state of Montana recently made extremely disproportionate cuts to this program. While these cuts won't affect the College/Huffine trail, they threaten many future projects.  Click here to learn more.

Intrinsik Receives 2010 Trail Partner Award
At GVLT's 16th annual Trail Mix fundraiser on September 23rd, our third annual Trail Partner Award was presented to Intrinsik Architects.  Intrinsik has consistently been one of the best subdivision design firms with a strong commitment to creating quality greenway trails in new subdivisions.  They have created beautiful designs for the Regional Park Bridge and the Drinking Horse Mountain Bridge which has received multiple design awards, and they made extremely generous in-kind donations towards creation of both bridges.  Finally, they are largely responsible for creating GVLT's Longest Day of Trails fundraiser, and have been strong supporters of the event every year.  Past Trail Partner Award recipients were long-time trail builder Terry Johnson (2008); and Lisa and Russ Tuckerman (2009) who each served as GVLT Board members and Board Presidents and have been strong supporters of the Trails Program since GVLT's beginning.

 Visit www.gvlt.organd click on donate now to make a contribution.