Volunteer Help On The Way

Good Morning Fellow NCTr's:

Next Monday, August the 2nd, twelve youth volunteers and their adult advisors will arrive at Gamelands 285 to help us with our trail-building project out to the Indian Rock area. These folks are coming from Michigan, Indiana, and Minnesota and will be spending the week in the Chippewa/Beaver Falls area doing various service projects through the sponsorship of Mount Olive Lutheran Church. Mr. Ron Heitsch, Volunteer Director with the church, is familiar with the North Country Trail in the area and graciously offered us assistance with any projects that we had going on.

Mr. Heitsch and I walked the flag line for the new section yesterday afternoon and worked out the logistics and schedule of the operation. We also took a drive over to the backpack shelter and I offered its use for an evening cookout/campfire for the entire group of volunteers if they wanted to use it.

The volunteers' schedule of events and activities for the week, as Mr. Heitsch explained to me, is still a "moving target", so some flexibility on our part is going to be required, but at this point here is the plan:

On Monday morning they have a team-building exercise in Beaver Falls and upon its conclusion they'll return to the church in Chippewa for lunch. I am going to meet up with them at noon (free lunch!) and then our assigned group of twelve kids and their advisors will head to the Sterling Road trailhead at Gamelands 285 where we'll do the safety talk, orient them to the tools we'll be using, and give them a tour of the new trail route. Hopefully they'll have some time to get started on trail building before they head back to the church at 3:00.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday the volunteers will arrive at Sterling Road at approximately 9:00 AM, walk in to the site, and work on building trail until 3:00 PM or so.

I need your help. The size of the group and their probable lack of trail-building experience is going to necessitate some supervision and guidance on our part. Fortunately, my work schedule will allow me to be out with them all day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and then on Thursday morning. I won't be available at all on Friday. If you could join me for all or part of any of those days next week or be there on Friday for me I would appreciate your help. You don't even need to be the trail-building maven - general knowledge of what we've already built, and a "North Country Trail presence" would be enough support, I believe. Even a short visit by members of the organization would be a plus. Please shoot me an email to let me know of your intentions on this. I would definitely welcome a partner (or three or four) on this.

I am looking forward to working with this group of volunteers. We can provide them with a positive community-service project and they will definitely help us with extending the North Country Trail another quarter of a mile eastwards towards Darlington.

Thanks in advance, and thank you for all you do for the North Country Trail.

Dave Brewer