Much of the maintenance work still centered on opening the Cleetwood Cove Trail each spring, though the tasks of removing rocks and snow paled in comparison to the effort once required on the Crater Wall Trail. By the summer of 1978, however, an eroded bank along the Cleetwood trail required about a thousand square feet of stone rip rap.175 Major maintenance projects aside, the superintendent several months previously requested $2,000 in order to combat loose soil and dust by spreading wood chips on the trail. After eschewing the traditional dust palliative of road oil, the NPS found that wood chips used from 1965 to 1968 could not stand up to trail tractors used by the park concessionaire to service the boat operation. Since hard surfacing the trail with asphalt constituted a safety hazard, the NPS applied an oil spray treatment in 1969 that had to suffice as a surface for much of the following decade.176
Despite the Cleetwood Cove Trail remaining in the leading position with regard to use, interest in the backcountry and hiking at Crater Lake in general had widened to the point where the first guidebook to park trails was published in 1980. It included several motorways that had never been maintained as trails and the author noted such routes might be cleared and improved as visitor interest in the backcountry increased.177 The author also mentioned that the snow-free season for hiking at Crater Lake could be short depending on the year, but did not include which trails had been marked for winter travel after stating that snowshoeing and cross country skiing were permitted.
In responding to what several park staff members saw as an increase in winter backcountry use, the NPS placed colored tags on trees located along several trail corridors during the summer of 1978. Employees signed a total of 21 miles this way, thus creating new ski trails to serve as an adjunct to the more popular Rim Drive circuit that bore no winter markings, apart from temporary signage at the two terminal points.178 By the end of 1980, a total of 50 miles of ski trails had been marked to include the Dutton Creek route, the old motorway that traversed Pumice Flat (the “Stuart Falls Trail”) and the one forming the PCT route going past Union Peak and then north to cross Highway 62, and eventually veering east toward Lightning Spring. Another motorway route went past Crater Peak and was marked all the way to the park’s south boundary.179
