Mt. Olive Lutheran Church Volunteers Recap

Good Evening Fellow NCTr's:

I went back out to the Indian Rock area this afternoon to retrieve a tool we left behind last week (found it!) and decided that since I was going I'd take along the measuring wheel, camera, and notebook to nail down some numbers on what the volunteer help from the Mt. Olive Lutheran Church accomplished last week. The photo above is from the vista we opened up on top of the hill near Indian Rock.

Before I get into the numbers I want to again thank Mr. Ron Hietsch with the church for offering us the assistance of those young folks, and for Mt. Olive's Pastor, John Pingel for his support of the project. Ron was out with the crew all four days, leading the digging charge up one side of the hill and down the other. He was also kind enough to donate some lumber to get us over a pretty steep spot on one of the switchbacks. Help from Chapter members was greatly appreciated too, with Gail Blakely, Jared Gess, Dennis Garrett, and Rick Ostheimer coming out and supporting the project and those young folks. Rick spent all four days with the crew and his expertise, insight, patience in teaching and training, and switchback-digging abilities were invaluable. I also wanted to mention that Ron Hietsch's son Mike came out with us for a day, and to thank him for expertly running the chainsaw to clear the many obstacles in our way. All told, we had nineteen different youth volunteers from the local area and the states of Minnesota and Michigan out on the trail, along with three adult advisors who worked just as hard alongside them.

I have a map of the Indian Rock area posted here: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&ll=40.793896,-80.472633&spn=0.004524,0.009624&t=h&z=17&msid=108657039929755040265.00048dac38585c56e767d

with the red line denoting the trail on the ground. It is a crazy looking thing, the route making a big circuit out to the hill and then back to the double track to get a hiker back to the Sterling Road trailhead. Next spring, as we head east along the North Fork of Little Beaver Creek on the Kirkwood Farm and Caller properties the line will straighten out. For now, it is a nice walk - and much more interesting than a straight-line shot out to Sterling Road.

By the wheel from this afternoon:

The new section is 1.02 miles long (boy did I understate that) but we'll be losing .2 of a mile along the double track to the iron bridge, so for now we'll be adding .82 miles to the trail at Gamelands 285. That will change once we head east along the creek.

Pastor Mark Love and his small "grubbing crew" did an expert job of cleaning up and smoothing out well over 300 yards of flat treadway from the bottom of the hill back westwards to the existing trail at the old iron bridge, leaving us 108 yards left to do in that direction. Piece of cake.

The hillside digging crew, working upwards on the western end of the hill, dug 146 yards of switchback trail to the top, carving six different legs out of the hillside. Then they grubbed .1 of a mile across the top of the hill, past the rock and the vista, and over to the other end, leaving about thirty-three yards in assorted areas that need to be fine-tuned.

Then the hillside crew, going back down the eastern end of the hill, dug 227 yards of sidehill trail involving five different switchback legs. The going was smooth (except for the bees' nest we dug up) until they hit the last bit of hillside where a lot of shale was encountered. In some places they dug back into the hill to a depth of 42 inches and pushed a ton (literally, I think) of dirt down over the hillside. Amazing! Those guys -and gals - can dig!!

The shale area is a tough piece of ground and we'll have to spend some time working with that treadway - it may become our yearly cleanup project, much like the River Road trailhead at Cemex. The overnight rainfall settled down most of what was worked on last week but caused some minor sliding in the shale area. It is an area we'd have rather not had to get into but we'll work with what Mother Nature gave us and figure it out.

The last 700 yards back to the existing trail to Sterling Road will be Game Commission double track, some of it maintained annually, some of it (through deeper woods) is in need of mowing with the DR. I do see on the map though an opportunity for a small shortcut - but then again it always appears simpler looking at it on Google Earth than being on the ground, thrashing through the brush and multifloral rose :)

In addition to the aforementioned finish-off work to do, two sixteen-foot bridges need to be put in place and paint blazing needs done. We'll shoot for the end of September for completion so as to get onto other things that need done at the Gamelands.

Thanks again to everyone who helped with this last week and for all of the support. It would have taken us a year (years?) of regular trailwork sessions to get accomplished what happened in four days. Amazing!

Photo album here: http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/578308086jqdcgb

Dave