Waterworld!!! Cardigan Trail Work Weekend

[Jazzbo]

I brought the family up to do trailwork at Cardigan as part of New Hamspshire Chapter Trail Work Weekend. We had a great turnout considering the weather. We put in full day on Saturday and half day on Sunday. We all got thoroughly wet and muddy, but accomplished impressive work considering the conditions. We cleaned out and added over 120 waterbars and drains on the most popular tourist trails that get the heaviest traffic. We also installed 11 log steps. Cleaning out drains was the best. Trails were like rivers and responded immediately to drain cleaning. Talk about instant gratification. If you loved playing in the water when you were a kid, this was the place. Water was pouring out of the ground everywhere on the trails. Bailey Brook was roaring with very unusual hydraulic jumps. Some underwater feature was causing pulsating column water to continuously jump right up for no apparent reason. I would have taken pictures but was paranoid about taking our costly camera out on trails in these conditions. I did take pics of some streams on way out that I have posted on webshots.

http://community.webshots.com/myphotos?action=viewAllPhotos&albumID=550397627&ran=12387

 

[Ridgewalker]

I'll be climbing Cardigan first weekend in June. If I'm on Bailey Brook now I know who to thank for building that trail.

 

[David Metsky]

Trailwork in the rain is the best! You get to see exactly where the water is flowing, and where the backups occur. Thanks for your efforts.

-dave-

 

[Jazzbo]

Drain cleaning and siting waterbars is done best in the rain!

We had some youngsters who'd never done trailwork and in no time were cleaning drains w/ little or no supervision because when you do it in heavy rain it becomes intuitive. They also got the instant gratification of seeing instant results. It also becomes obvoius where new ones are needed. I observed a number of drains that even in this rain were not doing anything. There was one drain I saw that had a fancy pealed spruce log installed and was dry as a bone. I mean just looking at the trail it was at bottom of long grade on that basis alone looked like it might need one, but due to some fluke in water table there was just no water coming down to it. So rainy weather is the time to site drains.

I saw numerous places that needed drains. Some were minor and some obvously major. Some would have been easy to build and some harder, but that was the day to mark spots for new ones and prioritize them by how bad erosion potential was and most bang for the buck.

Again we got such a kick out of re-routing the water flow in some new direction or just blasting out some blockage of leaves with the pick. I remember one in particular that was really big and us watching it go marching downhill in new direction.

 

[HuiYeng]

Hi Jazzbo,
Awesome pictures. I know what you mean, althought I never hesitated to pull out my camera on a rainy day for great shots, but i can understand if it's an expensive camera.

I have though of getting one of these http://www.thewaterproofstore.com/dp65c.html
or upgrade my old beat up Canon to one of those Olympus all-weather or Pentax Optio W series.

Thanks for the trail works!

 

[Jazzbo]

Like any gear the cost of a camera is totally relative. To us this camera is costly. Mainly though the camera technically belongs to my wife so I tend to be conservative on taking risks like getting it wet.

 

[Jazzbo]

Now that I know who you are 7summits I recall the pics you took on Tripyramids. You know how to use your camera and get great pics form it. I'm still continuing to struggle with getting decsent pics aout of our relatively new one although I think I'm getting better. Problem is it's got 1000 menues to scroll thru.

Ray Caron