September 19th Recap

Good Evening Fellow NCTr's:

Wow! What a great evening on the North Country Trail. As the trailwork crew assembled at the Sterling Road trailhead and were getting ready to head in to go to work we noticed them coming up out of the gamelands. It was Tammy Veloski and Rayanne Aiken, along with Kyle and Dale (all down from Butler) finishing up their 6.5 mile hike from the state line. I love it when folks are out walking our sections of the NCT! Makes all the work worthwhile.

After taking a few photos we parted ways and the trail crew headed in to Indian Rock hill where we worked on cribbing, supporting, and backfilling two different areas of new trail. It is amazing what a crew of eleven volunteers (well, ten, since little Oliver is only eight weeks old and making his first trip out to Indian Rock - but we appreciated his support!) can accomplish in a couple of hours. We now have the last forty feet of trail on the shale hillside shored up, along with about sixteen feet across a wash supported, widened out, and in great shape to walk across.

Some photos from this evening are here: http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/577334854UNgKrW?start=144

My thanks to Wampum Chapter trailwork first-timers Jeff Murphy and Autumn Andrews (who brought Oliver along - that was pretty neat) for joining us, and the rest of the crew - Dennis and Cathy Garrett, Lee and Eleanor Fairbanks, Bill Majernik, Tom Scardina, and Doug Turner for all the great work this evening. This crew is getting well-practiced at this "trail work" stuff. I'm kind of sitting here laughing happily to myself, because when I put the call out for trailwork, and we get out to where we are going, I usually only have a general idea of what needs done and how we should do it. Everyone takes a look at the situation, comes up with great ideas and suggestions, and works together like a well-oiled machine to produce some great results - ones that I never pictured in my mind as being so good when completed. I'm always impressed by what we accomplish as a team. Thank you to everyone who works for the chapter and the trail.

We've got the treadway pretty well squared away on either end of Indian Rock hill now (other than getting out there in a rainstorm to find out where we might need some waterbars) and we're ready to finish off the last 500 feet of trail needing benched and grubbed to get back out to the Game Commission double track. We also have a sixteen foot bridge to install and paint blazing to do and we'll be ready for the fall community hike. Piece of cake.

Hope to see you tomorrow evening at the Davis Hollow Cabin for the Chapter meeting - 6:00 PM.

Dave Brewer