Workshop 8-25

Well, this weekend was certainly interesting!

We showed up on Friday for the Advanced Stone Work workshop taught by Peter Jensen, with slight drizzles and heavy fog. However, at just about the time we got down the mountain to the worksite the rain started. It quickly got very heavy, so we were just huddled under the tarp. After maybe a half an hour huddled under the tarp, we heard thunder, and the rain got harder yet. We do usually work in rain, at least light rain if not torrential downpours, but lightning is when we have to cut it off, obviously. Using metal tools and standing near the lightning rod/high line is certainly not a good idea. So, we had to call it. We stood around a little time after calling the day's work waiting for the rain to let up and were deciding the plan of action for the next day. It was decided to put up a tarp over the work area for safety reasons- you can work in the rain but there comes a point where everything get too slippery to do anything. Attendees today were- Me, Dan, Eddie, Peter and volunteers David Hogenauer, Mike Garrison and Tom Carr.


Of course, shortly after we left, the rain stopped! Isn't that the way?

After that, the new Americorp intern here and I went to the tool shed to empty the old ATC trailer and move everything into our shed. Our new intern is Dan Houser, and I hope to get him contributing to the blog here too, especially because I won't be here for 2 weeks very soon. I will be spending a week on the Clearwater Sloop and then another week at an Student Conservation Association event (The SCA is the program that I am interning through). I will finally be back here in mid September.

Saturday- The tarp did a great job at letting the ground under the crib wall get dry and so the work went smoothly. They got a dencent part of the wall done and even put in a step. Dan and I spend much of the day working on another section of the trail and shuttling gravel down to their worksite. We both are nearly novices at this work and their work went much faster and smoother then ours, but we got a base rock set and moved more rocks into the right area to become wall in the future. Attendees this day were David, Tom, Dan, me and Peter. Eddie stopped by momentarily w/ some people from the Applachian Trail Conservancy to show them the work so far.

Sunday- I was not there this day, I was at another event but it sounds like much more work got completed as well, despite the torrential downpours on this day as well. In all, Peter said that 50 sq feet of wall was built, as well as at leastone step. GOOD JOB! Attendees this day were David, Tom, Mike, Dan,and Peter.

Work Trip-8-22

Hi all, Carol again.

We had a work trip again on Tuesday. Big group for a nice day.

I was off and on winch/trail grading. I was lifting up and down a large rock as well as a carrier full or gravel; most of the time I was levelling out the grade of a section of nearly completed trail. We are trying to keep the grade of the trail to be no more steep then 10%, so one section needed to be lowered to allow for that. I'm sure the long distance hikers and the families with small kids will appreciate that!

Christine was finishing up a part of the trail that needed to be recribbed, as was mentioned in a previous entry. She was putting the orange colored mineral soil as a top tread material and then patting it down.

Brian, Richard and Renato were working on moving the gravel down the way to be back fill for the stairs from Sunday etc.

Ollie and Sona were working on splitting the huuuuge rock that was quarried down 2 weeks ago Tuesday. They got a few good chunks off, but it still needs further splitting.

Eddie was, of course, walking around from place to place helping each group.

Friday starts a workshop for Advanced Stone work, so if you are interested, call up our Volunteer Coord soon! Hope to see you all soon.

Also, if you are reading this, please post a comment. It would be nice to know if we have an audience yet!

Carol

Over the last week

Many of us working on the project have been in and out of the office and the work site. Its been awhile since I was at the site because I had an SCA intern service project I attended (building a blind-accessible trail at Lake Moreau St Park N of Albany). I did get to finish up the school searches so I get to start calling the schools later this week, I suspect. On Friday I went to photograph the old pre-80's AT going up to the summit and the dangerous but highly used social trail behind the old ski jump.

The Old 80's AT should be easier to restore ecologically I suspect, as in many places the organic matter is certainly starting to build back up, but the trail is definitely still used. Some of the more immediate things we need to do is to block the obvious entrance to the trail. It is right across the old Perkins loop drive from the existing AT. There are spray painted directions on the ground, but if you don't look down you might not realize that you should be turning right. I know even Thru-Hikers have taken this old route, and its understandable because it looks SO obvious. In fact, most of the old blazes are there and stand out quite a bit-certainly helped ME follow the trail. Some were painted black but that paint is wearing off and revealing the white again. I've seen the maps and the new AT we are building will actually be very close to following this old AT in this section, so making sure the old trail is masked will be important to keep people from accidently following this once the new one is completed.

The ski jump "trail" is a whole 'nother beast. It is used probably almost as much as the AT is to get to the top. It is very steep and rocky and would require a LOT of work to get people to 1) not use it and 2) restore the natural ecology. This is SO compacted here. Obviously there is nothing we can do about restoring the ski jump part, and that IS historical and maybe should be preserved safely. An interesting thing I think the park should do it is to make an historical interpretive exhibit about the ski jump, showing pictures from its heyday etc. The problem lies, of course, after that. The trail continues on its way past the ski jump ruins. It may have 100 years ago been a logging road or something but it is very wide, steep and compacted now. People probably take it because they just want to go up and it is the first access to UP from the area of the Inn (and the ski jump has steps so it looks like something to take!). The trail leads up to a lovely view of the Hudson (the new AT will give you this view too, but safely!), and after that the trail loses definition and people either turn around or just...go up the mountain in anyway they can, and that might not be a safe direction that they pick. I know in the last few weeks someone fell off of some ledge up there and broke 2 bones. This one is definitely going to be a challenge to restore; we would definitely have to hope that people would respect a sign that says "ecological resoration in process" because people already ignore the "Stay on the designated trails, people have DIED going on unofficial trails."

Sunday was another work trip, however I didn't attend, as I already had my full week in with the SCA trip. I hear they built some more stone steps and had some new young volunteers. More news on that coming on Wednesday as we have a work trip tomorrow as well! We have some new people showing up, and I hope they enjoy themselves!
See you,

Carol

ps- we are doing a photo shoot for brochures about the project tomorrow. If you know any aspiring models come along! Actually, you don't need to be a model, none of us are! but you will "look beautiful darlink."

Work other then trail building

Since my last entry, we haven't done any trail work exactly, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy!

Some of the office things I have been working on was finding contact information for local High Schools to get more younger people out here working with us. Lets hope we get some volunteers!

On the mountain, Brian and Christine have been working on the shelves in the tool shed, and a volunteer, Vic went out one day to continue working on the shelves as well.

On friday, I went and GPSed the new AT up until the Perkins drive cul du sac, so that we can get a better idea of how the trail looks and possibly put it onto a real map. I had a tough morning getting satellites but after the first hour and a half I was getting a good signal and it went pretty well. GPSing is fun when it works well. If you are interested in GPSing, some of the North New Jersey trails need some GPS work done so feel free to call us and ask us about it.

On Saturday, with all its beautiful, breezy, non humidness, Christine, Brian and I went and did a survey of the hikers around Bear Mountain. We wanted to know how many people who hiked were really knowledgeable about hiking and the trails. It was intereresting, and certainly a good day to be sitting outside! At some point we will compile the data and hopefully post it up here. It wasn't the most scientific of surveys, but it helped guage what the visitors might want.

have a great week!

Carol

Tuesday Workday

We went out to the mountain on Tuesday. We had three different project pieces going on. Steve was working on some rock shaping down the trail from the work site's toolboxes and tarp. I was working on quarrying some rocks with Roland, he was on the winch and I was on the belay rope. Brian and Christine were working on finishing up a crib wall that needed to be redone. Eddie was hopping around from group to group, as always.

I really enjoyed using the highline. There's something really neat about being able to hoist huge rocks high in the air w/ relatively little effort. I think I enjoy it more then rock shaping myself. I'll have to get in on some of those rigging workshops (how about you? sign up!).

Around 10:00, the Rockland County Americorp representative, Kathy, came with Heidi (volunteer coordiator) to check out the worksite and take some pictures and to watch out Americorp interns in action. She seemed to really enjoy seeing us work.

Eddie, Roland and Steve all left around lunch time. At that point I had to find something else to do down there as I obviously couldn't run the highline by myself. I worked a little bit at trying to find another rock to fit on a tricky rock with a roundish shape. I was a bit unsuccessful in finding the right one yet, I sure hope we didn't pick a bad base rock! I also worked a little on changing to slope in one place, so as to be closer to the desired 10% grade of the trail. Brian and Christine finished up their wall and then headed over to work some more on the shelves in the toolshed. Anyone like carpentry?

Welcome!

I've just started up this blog to keep our volunteers up to date on what has been going here on the Appalachian Trail. I/we will try to update at least once a week to let you know what was accomplished, maybe post some pictures and give some shout-outs to the volunteers.

I'm a new intern here at the NYNJTC and I thought this might be something our volunteers would enjoy, and the NYNJTC would certainly like the record! I certainly hope you will agree and visit our blog every now and again. Please leave a comment when you find us!

Thanks,

Carol (the SCA intern)