Meet your newest walking buddy.

It’s not a pup or a pal, but a new path.

Last Saturday, the Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation and the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District celebrated the opening of the Veterane and Knudsen trails, which, together, create a new four-mile loop through the Gazzam Lake Nature Preserve.

You can thank a crew of college kids for the November debut.

Traditionally, trail construction has been helmed by volunteers during four-hour work parties held every fourth Saturday of the month. (The park district’s staff and budget is too lean to take the lead here; with 43-plus miles to manage, trails coordinator Erik Sherwin has his hands full with maintenance.)

While the effort of groups like Gear Grinders and BHS’ cross country team has been superb, the staccato set-up makes progress slow; construction takes “months and months and months,” explained Barb Trafton, executive director of the parks foundation.

Enter the Summer Trails Crew. Over the past year, the parks foundation has worked increasingly with the park district to acquire new trails and easements. But with a growing backlog of trails waiting to be built, “we realized the park district needed more help,” said Trafton.

So the parks foundation provided the funding, along with the Bainbridge Community Foundation, to establish a summer workforce completely dedicated to building and maintaining trails.

“We feel like this is going to be an important piece as we sustain trail systems over time,” Trafton said of the program, which she hopes the parks foundation can support annually.

Over the course of six blistering weeks, the recruits, led by Addison Houston, spent 576 hours clearing logs, hedging vegetation, constructing causeways and more — almost all of it by hand.

On the Veterane parcel, Houston’s team picked up where two years of work parties had left off: developing a nearly mile-long path from Baker Hill to the southwest end of the park. It was a two-week project.

Another four weeks, and they had built the Knudsen strand from inception to completion, which stretched for a little more than half a mile.

They also renovated the Rockaway Bluff Trail, which was pooling over in parts with water and mud and bottlenecking through its southern portion. And they helped park district staff top dress the entrance of the Forest to Sky trail for the park district’s big 50th birthday celebration.

“They did a fantastic job for the island, building trails in some very difficult terrain,” said Park Services Director Dan Hamlin. “We’re grateful to them, the Bainbridge Community Foundation, and of course, the Bainbridge Island Park Foundation, for making this happen.”

An updated map for the Gazzam network can be found online. Parking is available at the Gazzam lots at Marshall Road and Deerpath Lane, as well as along Baker Hill Road and Crystal Springs Drive.

A little history

David and Joyce Veterane donated the first parcel, 7 acres with 500 feet of shoreline along Crystal Springs Drive, to the park district back in 2005.

The Knudson portion came seven years later, in 2012; the family sold the 8-acre property to the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District at a steep discount.

So how come it’s 2015 and we’re just getting the trails now? There were capital funding delays, additional easements that had to be procured, the need to vet planning through the Bainbridge Island Land Trust and a protracted trail-building process — until now.