AT Trail Report

Monday I led a High Country Hikers hike Max Patch to Lemon Gap and return. Slushy snow and mud...there are eight trees across the AT,,,two go unders, five step overs and one BIG go arounder Section needs reblazing especially going north after the summit before entering the first group of trees. The camp site area creates a "trail" straight ahead whereas the AT goes right ( no double blazes there) Perhaps blue blaze the camp site path. Some tread work here and there but no significant problems. Went by the new shelter location...cool !! Happy Trails, Neal

 

New AT Shelter Construction

I am looking at a reasonable forecast for Saturday and Sunday, 4/16 - 4/17. The crew will be taking more stuff down the hill on Friday. We will be doing the fancy cutting on the front platform support log, trimming the tops of all three support logs, moving and compacting the dirt so it is at the proper level, and whatever else we can accomplish. Let me know if you can come. Thanks. Howard McDonald

 

Trail Crew Training Opportunity!

Hi Everyone We have been funded to provide training to trail crews by the storm team. We think this is a great opportunity to get everyone "up to speed" on the latest and greatest techniques in trail maintenance. What we need to know before we schedule the class is what day works best for everyone. It will be a three day training. One day in the classroom with powerpoint and discussion. And two days out on the trails. We were thinking that it would probably be easiest for people to make it if we did it for example on 3 consecutive Saturdays (or any day of the week that would be best for everyone). We didn't think many would be able to come if we did it three straight days (i.e. Mon, Tues, and Wednesday). If each crew leader can e-mail me back and let me know what works best for your crew, we will come up with what works best for the majority of the people. Thanks Kriste, Pisgah Ranger District

 

Mountain Trails by John Soldati

It’s late February and we are working under a weeping gray sky at Bull Gap. The crew is rebuilding a tier of steps that have long sense been dangerous to hikers. Light rainsqualls skip through the gap, making our work somewhat uncomfortable from time to time. We have been out since early morning digging the step trenches for the large four foot six by six inch heavy wooded bars. The Park Service maintenance crew has dropped them off for our use. Each bar is pre-drilled at each end so that an eighteen inch steel rebar can be driven in to hold the step in place. Because there is plenty of rock available, we are filling the risers with crushed rock by throwing large flat stones on the tread and smashing them with sledgehammers. This “crush” will hold the soil and add to hikers stability when crossing this tier of steps. Bull Gap is about three thousand feet and a location that absorbed the major brunt of the hurricanes last September. An adjacent hill just south of the gap looks as if giants were playing pick-up-sticks with large oak, popular, locust and black gum trees. Along the west face of the hill there is not more than eight feet of clear space between fallen and bowed trees. Soon we will be cutting a new section of the MST (Mountains to the Sea Trail) through this devastated forest, a distance of more that four hundred feet, to relocate the trail. So goes this winter’s work. Our crew has been weathered out more Wednesdays than ever before. Snow, rain and high winds have kept us off the trails except for a few days since early January. There is much work to do all around our areas of trail maintenance responsibility. We have had high winds and rain pass through western North Carolina and snows even into early April. When good weather returns it will be fun again to go out without having to abort for frozen ground, rain and snow storms. Soon, we will be pointing our group toward the Appalachian Trail and places like Big Stamp and Whispering Gap. We’ll go up to the high meadows above Street Gap to put large fog and snow blaze posts in to guide the hikers in the pea soup clouds that settle down usually in the early mornings. Our crew will unload at Catpen Gap and trek up to the summit of Bluff Mountain doing winter cleanup on the tread. We’ll be at Walnut Mountain Shelter repairing a latrine roof and floor. While up there we will make a new site for the spring that is almost filled with silt and rock. Lots of work to do in these hills and on the trails and as Robert Frost once wrote: “I’m going out to clean the pasture spring, You come too.” You guys take care out there. J