Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

The Huckleberry Trail bridge over Southgate Drive was closed after town staff noticed some of its supports were rusted. During its repair trailgoers are directed down to a crosswalk on Southgate.

Mia Cuneo | Special to The Roanoke Times

Steven Duong jogs on the Huckleberry Trail in Blacksburg in March.

Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Rusty metal is visible on the Huckleberry Trail bridge over Southgate Drive in Blacksburg. It's the rust, in fact, that led officials to close the bridge for repair. Trailgoers are led to a crosswalk below in the meantime.

The Huckleberry Trail expansion picture continues to become clearer in the two Montgomery County towns, with money being allocated and plans taking shape.

If all goes well, residents and trail enthusiasts should within two to three years see a Huckleberry Trail that runs from the Christiansburg Recreation Center, through Christiansburg and Blacksburg, and connects to Jefferson National Forest in Montgomery County, said Bill Ellenbogen, president of the nonprofit group Friends of the Huckleberry.

"Things are going really smoothly right now," he said.

The trail currently consists of a six-mile stretch that starts at the New River Valley Mall parking lot, runs into Montgomery County, connects to Blacksburg with a sharp right turn under U.S. 460 to Plantation Road, and ends at Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library in downtown Blacksburg.

Plans call for the trail to continue north near the portion that connects to Plantation Road. It will connect to the Hethwood Trail and continue across Prices Fork Road and to the Blacksburg Fire Department before eventually reaching Glade Road, which connects to the national forest trail network through Heritage Park.

A number of projects are in place to bring these connections to fruition, said Blacksburg Parks and Recreation Director Dean Crane.

The town just finished a trail section on a one-third-mile stretch of property on Prices Forks Road through a $100,000 Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation grant. The grant required a 20 percent local match. Blacksburg provided its own labor to account for half the local match, and the Montgomery County Parks and Recreation department gave the town the other 10 percent, Crane said.

Blacksburg is also working on some easements from businesses and organizations for property that would connect Virginia Tech land to Heather Drive, Crane said.

The portion of the trail that extends 1.5 miles from the fire station to Glade Road has been designed, and the town is working to gain approval through Virginia Tech to extend through its property, he said. Crane said funding will come through the Virginia Department of Transportation Revenue Sharing Program, and though he didn't have an exact figure, said it would cost roughly $100,000 per half-mile.

These projects aren't being worked in sequential order, so Crane said he can't lay out a timetable in phases. He did say trailgoers will notice a drastic growth in the current offerings.

"It's exciting. Within the next one year to two years, the Huckleberry is going to have an expansion boom," he said. "It's going to be one heck of a trail for the New River [Valley]."

After some four years of planning and applying for grants, the section that connects to the Hethwood Trail is a VDOT notice-to-proceed away from fruition, said Tech's Alternative Transportation Manager Debby Freed.

Freed said "a missing link will be put in place," with this stretch of the trail, by making it a continuous network. This portion will be completed by a $311,000 VDOT Transportation Enhancement Grant, pending the notice to proceed -- which Freed hopes to receive this summer, she said. The actual work should take two to three months, Freed said.

Trailgoers in Blacksburg have been inconvenienced since April by a bridge closure over Southgate Drive. The bridge was closed as a safety precaution after town staff noticed some of its supports were rusted.

It was later announced that the bridge would be replaced. In the meantime, those who cross have been using a set of temporary stairs that lead to a crosswalk on Southgate Drive.

"I try to avoid the bridge right now," said Corey Watkins, an expecting mother on maternity leave.

She's looking forward to the bridge being replaced, after a "horrible" experience Wednesday, in which she had to get help carrying an infant and a stroller up and down the stairs to get to the other side.

Crane said a replacement bridge has been ordered and will take about 6 weeks to arrive. When finished, the new bridge will look similar to the old one, except that the steps are two feet wider. The replacement and construction work is budgeted at $75,000, Crane said.

Ellenbogen said $2 million is in place to construct the new piece of the trail that would extend from the mall to the Christiansburg Recreation Center. Depending on the town's timetable of constructing a bridge across Pepper's Ferry Road, the trail should be completed within two to three years, Ellenbogen said.