While the half mile circuit represented the latest in a string of trail projects planned and built on an ad hoc basis, advent of the Fee Demonstration Program (where a percentage of entrance fees collected at Crater Lake and other park units could be retained by the NPS for use in projects rather than being sent directly to the Treasury) created the possibility of a stable and abundant funding source for undertakings with a direct tie to enhancing visitor experience. One of the first proposals submitted for this program at Crater Lake aimed at remaking motorways used as trails into routes that did not look or feel like roads. Some of this work might be accomplished through removal of one or both vehicle tracks, culverts at stream crossings, and revegetating heavily disturbed areas. Killam-Bomhard and other staff members knew, however, that the goal could only be accomplished in many places through reroutes that required building new tread.204
Two trail segments floated to the top of a matrix used for site selection in 1998. The first was a 1.6 mile section of the PCT between junctions with the Dutton Creek Trail and the connecting link to Annie Spring. Stakes indicating station numbers had been placed along it by the summer of 1999 as part of survey for identifying the work needed and then estimating costs. The upper half became part of a reroute that originated in 2000. It ascended the divide further upslope and utilized switchbacks before joining the old motorway near Castle Creek, so as to avoid a badly eroded section of old road.205 The other got wrapped into a larger site redevelopment project near Vidae Falls, which involved reconfiguring the picnic area, trail rerouting, and the reallocation of vehicle parking there. The trail portion called for abandoning a sequence of “tank traps” and where the old motorway snaked along a portion of Vidae Ridge in favor of starting the trail from the Vidae Falls Picnic Area. From there it followed the old Rim Road corridor to Vidae Ridge, adopting a route having more views of Crater Peak and the background panorama of mountains. Augmenting the trail crew’s efforts were a group of Northwest Youth Corps enrollees for the heavy rock work needed to establish a route where the old Rim Road had been buried by the fill from Rim Drive above it. Volunteers from the Friends of Crater Lake National Park helped with tread work so that the one mile reroute could be completed in 2001.206
Success with the initial reroute led to another set of undertakings. One project called for essentially abandoning a half mile segment of bridle path linking Annie Spring with the PCT in favor of a more sinuous route up the divide. The other projects effected more extensive reroutes, in that more than 2.5 miles of fire roads were to be abandoned north of its junction with the Pumice Flat “Trail.” Killam-Bomhard proposed an almost total realignment of the Union Peak Trail of 1.9 miles, save for the last tenth of a mile to the summit. This necessitated abandonment of all fire roads leading west from the PCT and over half of the existing foot trail.207 Work took place during the summers of 2002 and 2003 in conjunction with other trail maintenance tasks assigned to NPS crews and the Northwest Youth Corps.208
