A HALF-MILE TRAIL loops through piñon and juniper, touring the edge of a watercourse in the pinkish ground of the Galisteo Basin. Benches, shade structures, and interpretive signs dot the pathway.
The Santa Fe Conservation Trust designed and built the Accessible Trail at Dovetail, which opened in December, to meet the needs of individuals with disabilities, senior citizens, and families wanting to partake in the beauty found in the five miles of trails at Dovetail and 50 miles of trails at the adjoining Galisteo Basin Preserve.
“There are so many people out there who want to go and enjoy these spaces like Galisteo Basin, where there’s so much natural history and the landscape is beautiful,” says Dustin Berg, founder of Global Opportunities Unlimited, a nonprofit focused on connecting people with compromised mobility with outdoor experiences.
Paved trails like this one, he says, also make it easier for people to interact with nature and with their whole family, as kids and seniors benefit from simple amenities, like somewhere to sit down in the shade.
As open space, the Galisteo Basin provides a crucial wildlife corridor that links the diverse ecosystems of the Rocky Mountains, the highlands of central New Mexico, the Río Grande Valley, and the Great Plains. Historically, it has also provided an important passageway for people. Now, Berg says, the trail system is building a point of connection for outdoor recreationalists and creating links to a wider landscape. The Rio Rancho resident, who lost the use of his legs in a 2003 motorcycle accident, has already had his adaptive mountain bike out there.
In an era of increasingly capable adaptive equipment, including wheelchair attachments and three-wheel mountain bikes with suspension systems, a trail that is roughly 40 inches wide and with inclines less than about 15 percent could host adaptive mountain bikers.
“There’s so much room for growth,” Berg says. None of it has to come at the cost of easing gnarly trails for riders who want to tackle those. “We’re not trying to sanitize,” he says. “We’re trying to build on, to create more, better, bigger.”
Read more: Get out on these three other ADA-accessible trails.