Jazzbo
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I thought I’d post this trip report to highlight trail work in general and in particular to plug trail work weekends at Cardigan Lodge. We had full house of 55 volunteers for the annual Halloween Trailwork Weekend at Cardigan Lodge. Cardigan hosts trail work weekends three times a year …. Mother’s Day Weekend, Weekend after Labor Day, and Halloween.
By way of background and not going into too much detail, trails on Mt Cardigan are unique as they’re maintained completely by volunteers with very little input from so-called professional trail crews. Of course ALL work is an “AMC volunteer activity” and is carried out under the auspices of the AMC and monitored by AMC for quality of work and safety. AMC provides the lodge facilities for lodging.
My involvement is mainly that of crew leader. I show up Friday night and meet the night before with Trail Master Craig and the other crew leaders to discuss what needs to be done and to figure out people power needed to get the work done. Craig S, Tim D, Ray L and others do a great deal of up-front work doing advance-planning hiking the trails, arranging for materials such as making sure spruce gets pealed and cut to length beforehand. Then of course there’s Carolyn who handles signups and assigning accommodations for volunteers, finding qualified cooks volunteer or otherwise. Some crews might spend a day peeling spruce logs for use in building log steps the next day or even later that year.
Not sure how other regions work, but it’s safe to say Cardigan trail crews go beyond level 1 trailwork even into designing and planning drainage construction and bridges of all kinds. We also have regular and on-call chainsaw and power tool certified volunteers for dealing with blow-downs and cutting logs for trail structures.
We could use more people interested in taking on leadership roles. Involvement with this team has provided me the opportunity to pick up all sorts of trail building skills over time. I’m very pleased with new skills I’m learning through my involvement as well as the good friends I’ve made through my involvement. Of course as a leader, you have to be willing do mundane projects like brushing or drain cleaning and not every assignment is a learning experience.
Of course as a leader you get to meet new freinds and serve as role modle to young people. On Saturday I led a crew that included three young girl scouts in a travel troop and their leaders to clean the 40 to 50 waterbars on the Upper Manning Trail. Lots of fun! Here’s a picture of my drain cleaning crew from Saturday.
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Besides the drain cleaning, we used girl power to move a number of big blow-downs off the trail. I’ve always been interested drainage and erosion control. Last year I got to work with Craig S and Scott M installing 4-5 water bars on the Clark Trail. By virtue of this experience I think Craig thought I was ready to lead a crew to install a water bar on the Holt Trail. Here’s a picture of my crew on my first unsupervised installation of a water bar on a trail. Craig gave us an A+!
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The main focus of the Halloween weekend is to brush the Mount Cardigan ski trails, but usually includes sending team out to clean waterbars on the most popular trails to prepare trails for winter and spring run-off. My wife joined trail crews brushing the Alexndria Ski Trail. You can see these are much wider than the official 4’ X 8’.
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They also used people power to remove blow-downs from the trails.
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That's my report on trail work at Cardigan. Check it out some time!!!
By way of background and not going into too much detail, trails on Mt Cardigan are unique as they’re maintained completely by volunteers with very little input from so-called professional trail crews. Of course ALL work is an “AMC volunteer activity” and is carried out under the auspices of the AMC and monitored by AMC for quality of work and safety. AMC provides the lodge facilities for lodging.
My involvement is mainly that of crew leader. I show up Friday night and meet the night before with Trail Master Craig and the other crew leaders to discuss what needs to be done and to figure out people power needed to get the work done. Craig S, Tim D, Ray L and others do a great deal of up-front work doing advance-planning hiking the trails, arranging for materials such as making sure spruce gets pealed and cut to length beforehand. Then of course there’s Carolyn who handles signups and assigning accommodations for volunteers, finding qualified cooks volunteer or otherwise. Some crews might spend a day peeling spruce logs for use in building log steps the next day or even later that year.
Not sure how other regions work, but it’s safe to say Cardigan trail crews go beyond level 1 trailwork even into designing and planning drainage construction and bridges of all kinds. We also have regular and on-call chainsaw and power tool certified volunteers for dealing with blow-downs and cutting logs for trail structures.
We could use more people interested in taking on leadership roles. Involvement with this team has provided me the opportunity to pick up all sorts of trail building skills over time. I’m very pleased with new skills I’m learning through my involvement as well as the good friends I’ve made through my involvement. Of course as a leader, you have to be willing do mundane projects like brushing or drain cleaning and not every assignment is a learning experience.
Of course as a leader you get to meet new freinds and serve as role modle to young people. On Saturday I led a crew that included three young girl scouts in a travel troop and their leaders to clean the 40 to 50 waterbars on the Upper Manning Trail. Lots of fun! Here’s a picture of my drain cleaning crew from Saturday.
Besides the drain cleaning, we used girl power to move a number of big blow-downs off the trail. I’ve always been interested drainage and erosion control. Last year I got to work with Craig S and Scott M installing 4-5 water bars on the Clark Trail. By virtue of this experience I think Craig thought I was ready to lead a crew to install a water bar on the Holt Trail. Here’s a picture of my crew on my first unsupervised installation of a water bar on a trail. Craig gave us an A+!
The main focus of the Halloween weekend is to brush the Mount Cardigan ski trails, but usually includes sending team out to clean waterbars on the most popular trails to prepare trails for winter and spring run-off. My wife joined trail crews brushing the Alexndria Ski Trail. You can see these are much wider than the official 4’ X 8’.
They also used people power to remove blow-downs from the trails.
That's my report on trail work at Cardigan. Check it out some time!!!
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