2010 Trail Work Plans

It seems that spring came on fast this year in western Pennsylvania and we're ready to get out on our section of the North Country Trail and get to work. Your co trail work coordinators Bob Cody and Dave Brewer have been out doing scouting work and utilizing information from those trips, and also gathering input from other Wampum Chapter members and hikers, have come up with a general list of things we'd like to accomplish in 2010. These projects range from the "large and challenging" to the more mundane year-to-year issues that we have to address.

Here is a partial list of what we'd like to get done:

• Build a backpacking shelter at Watt's Mill utilizing the NCTA Field Grant funds allocated to us.


• Add another quarter mile of new trail at PA Gamelands 285 to reach the Indian Rock area. We'll be adding a sixteen-foot bridge, about twenty feet of bog bridge, possibly another sixteen footer and definitely doing a lot of benching to work our way off of the hill at the far end.


• Do a three-hundred-yard reroute near the PA/OH state line to move the trail off of a game commission double track and place it along a ridge line in the woods.


• Find a way to deal with a tree that has fallen against the lime kiln on Cemex property.


• Add sixty feet of bog bridge in various locations to get up out of the perenially wet areas that aren't suitable for a reroute.


• Update some areas with signing as Bob has built a new sign to put in at Sterling Road and new Carsonite posts and signing have been received from the NPS.


• Add hiker "registration" boxes at various locations to use for user-informatin gathering, and as a communication and recruiting tool for the chapter.


• Put ramps on several of our existing bridges at Cemex to accomodate the passage of the DR mower.


• Address issues of unauthorized ATV and horse access in the known trouble spots.


• Fix a rock staircase (or reroute around it) that has fallen into disrepair at Cemex near Snake Run Road.

We can also add to this list areas of sidehill that we know could use some redressing (as in our "annual trip to River Road"), paint blazing that needs redone, and clearing deadfalls from the past winter (and the ones sure to come down this summer) and pruning and clipping away new trail-blocking growth.

Our list is long and it looks to be challenging. But the thing to remember about trail work is that it should be trail FUN. It's about getting out and doing something enjoyable and sharing the company of some like-minded friends, being in the woods, remembering that "every little bit helps", and "the work you do is worth at least twice as much as you're getting paid to do it" -concepts expressed to me by an old Mid State Trail maintainer I was talking to when I first started out on this. With these in mind I'd say we need some dirt diggers and bridge builders to come out with us for sure, but we also need brush pruners, walking-on-new-trail-tread checker outers, photographers, blaze painters, cloud watchers, bird-call and animal-track identifiers, walking-across-new-bridge testers, and new-story tellers.

We'll plan to get out twice a week for a couple of hours each day this year - one day in the Wampum area and the other in Beaver County. Based on work schedules and personal obligations we're going to end up working on different days of the week this season but we'll try to let you know a week or so in advance of what the plan is via email, the PA North Country Trail Facebook page, or in a couple of instances that we know about, by phone call. All are invited - bring a friend along and introduce them to us and the trail.

Hope to see you on the North Country Trail in 2010!

Tons of previous trail work pictures starting here http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/562015494uiidEO?start=12

And here http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/570844996cwpsLj