A settlement reached earlier this week between Raleigh and the owners of a quarry along Crabtree Creek means the city can finally proceed with a 2- to 3-mile extension of the Crabtree Creek Trail into Umstead State Park. The extension will create a roughly 18-mile paved greenway along Crabtree Creek from Umstead to Raleigh’s 28-mile Neuse River Trail.
“It’s the last missing piece,” Vic Lebsock, Raleigh’s senior greenway designer, said this morning.
The Crabtree extension had been held hostage in a battle between the city and local homeowners and Hanson Aggregates, which owns the Crabtree Quarry. Local residents didn’t like the blasting required to mine the rock; Hanson had a lot more rock it wanted to mine. (Read more about the settlement here.)
The settlement ends a 20-year dispute and clears the way for design to begin on a trail that Lebsock says has its “difficult aspects.” Foremost among them: On the east end the trail will need to climb up from Crabtree Creek to avoid a stretch of land Hanson will be allowed to quarry for about another 40 years.
“We’ll need to design-in switchbacks and make the trail handicap accessible,” Lebsock says. The  greenway will climb for about a quarter mile along Duraleigh Road, then follow a ridgeline across to Richland Creek, where switchbacks will again be employed to take the greenway down to Crabtree Creek. From there, the greenway will continue to Umstead.
There is currently no funding for the project, estimated to cost about $3.5 million. But that appears to be a temporary concern.
Lebsock says he’s currently pulling together “residual funds” from other greenway projects to fund the design element. He expects the design to begin by summer, with construction possibly beginning by summer 2015.
“That would be really aggressive,” says Lebsock. But if it happens, the trail could possibly be done by the end of next year.

Another project amid the building boom

Aggressive, too, considering Raleigh is in the midst of a greenway building boom. Consider:

• Walnut Creek Trail “We completed this extension last week,” Lebsock says of the 4.5-mile extension greeenway along its namesake creek, creating a continuous trail from Rose Lane to the Neuse River Trail. The Walnut Creek Trail now runs about 12 miles, from the Neuse River Trail west to Lake Wheeler Road. Eventually, it will run through N.C. State University’s Centennial Campus and connect with Lake Johnson, a distance of 15.6 miles.
• Neuse River Trail Just 0.8 miles is all that remains to be finished of the 27.5-mile Neuse River Trail, the spine of the Raleigh greenway system. Raleigh’s City Council awarded a contract for this stretch in January, construction is expected to begin this spring, the missing link is expected to be finished in August, says Lebsock.
• Honeycutt Creek Greenway This 5.6-mile stretch will create another vital link in the Raleigh greenway system, joining the Mine Creek Greenway (and greenway extending south around Shelly Lake and to the Crabtree Creek Trail) with the Mountains-to-Sea Trail at Falls Lake. Construction began last spring, the trail is expected to be finished in July.
• Crabtree Creek Trail This 4.1-mile extension will join the east end of the existing Crabtree Creek Trail with the Neuse River Trail at Anderson Point Park. Trail users will then be able to run/walk/bike/skateboard 14.6 miles to Lindsay Drive, where the trail currently ends. The aforementioned extension into Umstead will result in an overall run of 17 to 18 miles, says Lebsock.

The Umstead connection

What will happen when Crabtree Creek Trail reaches Umstead?
“The interesting conversation now is what to do with Umstead,” says Sig Hutchinson, current chairman of the Wake County Open Space and Parks Advisory Committee, a past president of the Triangle Greenways Council, and the Triangle’s leading greenway advocate.
“It’s just a trail on the other side of Ebenezer Church Road,” Hutchinson says of where the paved Crabtree Creek trail will meet the gravel Umstead bike and bridle trail, “and there is no doubt that this is going to be a major communing route  … .”
Umstead and its bike and bridle trail serve as a key greenway hub. To the south, the Umstead trail links with the Reedy Creek Trail and additional Raleigh greenway that run through Meredith College, N.C. State University and the Dorthea Dix property before meeting the Walnut Creek Trail. And to the west, Umstead’s bike and bridle trail links with Cary’s Black Creek Greenway, which runs 7.1 miles to Bond Park — and a connection with the White Oak Creek Greenway, which nearly links with the 20-mile American Tobacco Trail, which is one official bridge opening away from running into downtown Durham.
But back to Raleigh.
With all that work in progress, all those key links pending, it seemed reasonable to ask Lebsock if the new Crabtree Creek extension to Umstead was much of a priority.
He laughed.
“It’s number one now.”

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To view an interactive version of the Crabtree Creek Trail extension map, go here.

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Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.
Today’s 90-Second Escape: Six-Foot Vis

Our instructor was trying to put a positive spin on the situation. “It’s going to feel good when you get in the water today,” he told us at the start of our two-day open water scuba diving certification course. “The water temperature is between 80 and 84 down to 33 feet, and the air temperature” — he stopped to consult his multi-functional dive computer — “is 68.”
What’s the visibility? a classmate asked. This is where Dennis Zullig with Gypsy Divers of Raleigh put on his dancing shoes. After a long pause, he came clean.
“It’s between zero and six feet,” he said, then without adding a beat, added, “But you know, if you embrace the etherial aspect of it, with the swirly green and milkiness, it’s pretty cool.”
In scuba diving, it’s all about visibility — the distance you can roughly see before things start getting cloudy. 40-60 feet is considered good offshore North Carolina, visibility in the Caribbean can top 100 feet. The greater the vis, the more there is to see.
But as it turns out, our tap-dancing instructor was right. Seeing stuff up to 40 feet away is great. But not seeing it until it’s right on top of you is pretty cool, too, as today’s 90-second escape illustrates.

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Of our recent greenway coverage (see below), Bob writes: “Great overview! The only section I didn’t see mentioned this week is the missing link of the Crabtree greenway between Lindsay Drive and Umstead. Any good news on this one?”

I asked Sig Hutchinson about this stretch last week. Sig, as many of you may know, is the Triangle’s go-to guy when it comes to making trails happen. Back in the 1990s, he was the driving force behind getting mountain bike trails established at the Beaverdam area of Falls Lake. He moved on to become president of the Triangle Greenways Council, pushing greenway development throughout the Triangle. More recently, he’s been the chairman of the Wake County Open Space and Parks Advisory Committee, spearheading 2007’s successful $50 million Wake County open space bond referendum. Whenever there’s a snag in trail and greenway development, Sig usually is brought in to unsnag things. Such is the case with the aforementioned stretch of the Crabtree Creek Trail.

At present, the Crabtree Creek Trail runs about 12 miles along its namesake tributary, from Lindsay Drive downstream to Milburnie Road. Construction will soon begin on the 4.6 miles of greenway linking the Milburnie end of the trail with the Neuse River Trail, a 28-mile work-in-progress that should be finished in about a year. The two-mile stretch would create a link on the northwest end of Crabtree Creek Trail, from Lindsay Drive into Umstead State Park. The link would help fulfill one of the city of Raleigh’s primary greenway goals: to create an interconnected greenway network. In this case, a completed 18-mile Crabtree Creek Trail would provide a link through east and north Raleigh between the Neuse River Trail and Umstead State Park. From Umstead, greenway users can access Raleigh greenway on the west side of town as well as Cary greenway that is on the brink of connecting with the 22-mile American Tobacco Trail, which is on the brink (in a little over a year) of running into downtown Durham.

Unfortunately, the two-mile stretch of Crabtree Creek greenway-to-be between Lindsay Drive and Umstead has been caught in the crossfire of a dispute between local homeowners and a quarry through which the greenway would pass. The quarry has said it would grant greenway access to its land if the city allows it to expand operations at the site. That expansion would bring blasting closer to the homeowners, which doesn’t make them happy. Thus, a stalemate.

When I asked Sig for an update on the situation last week, he replied, “I can’t talk about it.” That means some sort of negotiation is going on. Often, that’s an encouraging sign: You can’t reach an agreement if you aren’t talking. Unfortunately, the three sides — the quarry, the homeowners, the city — have been “talking” for a dozen years.

An argument could be made that with the impending completion of the 2.9-mile House Creek Greenway, the Crabtree connector becomes less important. When it opens in about a month, House Creek will link the Crabtree Creek Trail at Crabtree Valley Mall with the greenway on Raleigh’s west side (Rocky Branch and Reedy Creek), as well as Umstead and the Cary greenway.

The Crabtree connector, though, is about more than just greenway. While I haven’t explored the two miles between Umstead and Lindsay Drive (it’s on private land, which would be trespassing, which would be illegal), those who have say it’s probably the most scenic stretch along Crabtree Creek from Lake Crabtree all the way to the Neuse. The added exposure of a greenway through this area would, I think, be the catalyst for awakening interest in Crabtree Creek’s long ignored, true recreational attribute: paddling.

Crabtree Creek is the rare, reliably navigable waterway through a major metro area. The creek has its remote stretches (Umstead, the wetlands near Raleigh Boulevard), it’s decidedly suburan stretches (through the back of Crabtree Valley Mall), it’s brushes with the 1 percent (along Allegheny Drive, where John Edwards once lived). Mostly, it’s an intimate passage under a full canopy, navigable year round. Yet there’s not one official put-in along this roughly 24-mile stretch.

There is a less contentious option for the Crabtree connector: a route that would leave Crabtree Creek at Ebenezer Church Road, head up the hill, then work its way though neighborhoods before dropping back down to the creek before heading into Umstead. That would bypass part of the scenic beauty those familiar with the stretch rave about. It would also bypass an abandoned portion of the quarry that could be used during heavy rains to collect flood water — and create what Sig Hutchins says would be the highest waterfall on the East Coast.

That would be cool, no doubt. But at this point, it still, after a dozen years, remains all talk. Perhaps it’s time for that talk to veer away from the creek and quarry and into the less contentious alternate route.

The Quarry Route

View Crabtree Connector to Umstead State Park in a larger map

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A week(plus) of greenways

Our week(plus) of greenways:

Thursday, April 12: House Creek Greenway to Open June 25 (Read: Memorial Day)
Monday: 90 Second Escape: Raleigh’s Growing Greenway System
Tuesday: Raleigh’s Neuse River Trail: Another 3.5 miles by August, 16.1 miles by November.
Wednesday: Raleigh’s Greenway: 2014 and Beyond.
Today: A Greenway-Connected Triangle.

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