Havre Trails awarded $10,000 for new Saddle Butte trail

Havre Trails was given the onX Emerging Outdoor Community Award last week, for its work enhancing outdoor recreation in the area, and has been awarded $10,000 to build a new trail in the Saddle Butte area.

Havre Trails Secretary Sammie Chagnon said it’s great to have the group’s years of work recognized and the opportunity to build more trails with the funds this award came with.

“We are super excited to get it,” Chagnon said. “It’s kind of an acknowledgment of all the work we’ve done.”

She said this was the first time they’d applied for the award and she’s really happy that onX, which produces apps for hunters and outdoor recreationalists, with interactive maps of recreation and hunting areas, and the Montana Access Project, which Havre Trails has worked with for years and which partners with onX to give the award, think so highly of what they do.

She said the $10,000 will fund a mile-long trail up to the butte but there is still a lot of work to do before there are more solid details.

Chagnon said they still need to map out the details of the trail, but they have a great resource in Havre Trails Board member Dave Lewis, who has a lot of experience in trail planning.

She said they also have some hoops to jump through getting conservation easements to ensure public access to the trail, but if everything stays on schedule, work should begin in spring and the trail will hopefully be open to the public next summer.

She said applying for these easements can be a complicated process, but they are getting a lot of help from Montana Land Reliance, a non-profit that partners with Montana private landowners to permanently protect agricultural lands along with fish and wildlife habitats.

Chagnon said Havre Trails has been wanting to get this project going for the better part of a year, but even with the help of Montana Conservation Corps, which does the bulk of the construction work on Havre Trails projects, there’s not much work that can be done in winter.

In the meantime, she said, Havre Trails will probably set up a few snowshoe hikes if weather cooperates, and work on getting everything ready for spring.

She said people interested in these hikes, or indeed local hiking and outdoor recreation in general, can always look at Havre Trail’s Facebook page to keep up to date about what’s going on in the area, and what projects the organization is working on.