We're Back! Fall 2021 Update

Upcoming workdays at Gus Fruh AND Homedale for It's My Park Day - Fall

Saturday Nov 6th, 2021   9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Register for the Gus Fruh project here and the Homedale project here.

Projects are limited to 25 participants, so please sign up soon to secure a spot.


Due to COVID restrictions, we haven't been able to hold a workday since February of last year. Now that things have eased up a little, we're coming out of hibernation with a double-header for the Austin Parks Foundation's It's My Park Day - Fall event on Saturday November 06, 2021.

We'll be working at both the Gus Fruh AND Homedale entrances from 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM. Collins Van Nort will lead the Homedale project and focus on invasive plant removal. Stan Ostrum will be leading the project at Gus Fruh focusing on trail maintenance.

Please note that these are 2 separate projects, each with a limit of 25 participants. Sign up soon to reserve your spot. Since space is limited though, please don't register until you're certain you're coming and be sure to let us know if you need to cancel.

Registration is open now!

For more information and to register for the Gus Fruh project, please go here.

For more information and to register for the Homedale project, please go here

Thanks in advance to those of you who volunteer, we look forward to seeing you soon!

In other news:

Glee Ingram, who started the Greenbelt Guardians in 2003 and has been overseeing our activities ever since, recently announced that she's now officially retired from active duty. It's been Stan Ostrum's privilege and pleasure to be her assistant for all these years, so he'll be carrying on as coordinator, Glee will become founder and coordinator emeritus, and we'll be looking for one or more new assistants to take on a formal role in keeping the Greenbelt Guardians going. Please let me know if you're interested.

Our website at www.greenbeltguardians.org has been updated for the first time in a while. We still need to upload the photos from a couple of previous workdays, but everything else should be up to date now including information on the upcoming projects.

The Austin Parks Foundation notified us last week that contract invasive species removal work with the Texas Conservation Corps would be resuming on the Barton Creek Greenbelt in January. We have almost $40K in our TCEQ SEP account that is dedicated to this work, so we'll coordinate with APF and TXCC to schedule and fund another project as soon as possible.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us over the years in one way or another, we wouldn't still be here without you!

Upcoming workday Saturday June 01 at Gus Fruh

National Trails Day is on Saturday June 01 this year, and we're planning to celebrate by finishing up the trail resurfacing project at the Gus Fruh access that we started back in March. We'll begin at 8:00 AM and work until we're done, hopefully by 10:30 or 11:00. There's water in the creek now and the crowds will be arriving, so the sooner we can finish up and get out of the way, the better. It's also likely to be hot. So we'll start early and only do the trail work this time instead of the variety of tasks that we usually take on.

We only need about 25 volunteers to complete the trail work but due to the rainy weather and concerns about getting the materials that we need, we're slow getting organized again. June 01 is coming up fast!  Please let us know as soon as you can if you're able to work with us that day by emailing us here.

We're looking forward to getting this job finished and hope that you'll be able to join us. Breakfast tacos will be provided!

Spring 2019 News

The Greenbelt Guardians celebrated our 16th anniversary on Saturday March 02 by participating in the Austin Parks Foundation’s annual spring “It’s My Park Day” event.  62 volunteers worked at the Gus Fruh entrance from 9AM – 1PM and put in a total of almost 200 hours of labor!

We resurfaced 500 feet of the switchback entry trail, from the main trail along the creek up to the first, level switchback at the top.  We used 12 tons (about 10 cubic yards) of decomposed granite mixed with StaLok stabilizer and a couple of yards of road base. The materials were moved down the trail one wheelbarrow at a time, spread and raked out by hand, and then compacted with plate packers and hand tampers.  It was quite an undertaking, but we had a great group of volunteers, good weather, and we had the materials delivered ahead of time to avoid the problem we had back in November, when 45 volunteers were ready to spread granite that didn’t show up!

Things went smoothly this time, the trail work turned out well, and we were also able to do some work on the lower trail and steps along the creek. Please check out the photos here. We hope to schedule another smaller workday in late April to finish resurfacing the trail all the way out to the street.

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