Bridge Work Thursday Morning

Good Evening Fellow NCTr's:

Let me get this out of the way first by saying, yes, after two years of crossing Painter Run by hopping rocks and tight-rope walking across logs without incident, now that we have not one, but two bridges across that stream, today was the day I finally fell in.  Other than that unfortunate incident, what a great day in the woods!  My phone (and more profoundly, my camera) survived the very chilly dunking.

Thanks to David Wright, Lee Fairbanks, John Vlah, and Dennis Garrett for coming out this morning to put in a sixteen-foot bridge over the overflow channel, and I especially appreciate all of Dennis's work on pulling together this complicated and time-intensive double-bridge project.  We also found the time today to do some "alignment tweaking" on the 32' foot bridge installed last week, and also to have lunch at the worksite. 

We now have a very smooth, all-season transition between the trail segments at Gamelands 285 and at the Kirkwood Farm.  Left to do out there is about 100 yards of grubbing on top of the hill above the creek on the farm, about twenty yards of the same near Hodgson Rd., and getting the blazes painted and orange flags pulled down.  If we push on it, and get a weather break in the next week or two, we'll have it wrapped up by the start of deer season.  We'll also work on some wooden signing over the winter to identify the couple of spur trails we've generated along the way (to Indian Rock and the Sterling Rd. parking area) as well as identifying the new trailhead on Hodgson Rd. - we'll plan to have those ready for installation in the spring.

I also wanted to appreciate Jake Erhardt for coming out on Tuesday morning to Mines and Meadows and Gateway.  We were able to get a couple of rough sections of sidehill on the approaches to the Gateway bridge cleaned up that morning.  Tough digging.  Before we started we reaffirmed our agreement that if, while working, anyone found any gold then we'd split evenly among that trail work session's crew.  Unfortunately, the agreement didn't have to be tested as we only found the usual limestone, sandstone, and roots as we grubbed.

Some pics from Tuesday and today start here.   I've updated the Google map of the trail from the state line to Hodgson Rd so you can see where we are - viewable  here.

One more thing - we're going to need more places to build off-road trail starting in the spring.  If you are interested in spending some time working with us on court house duty checking out plat maps and then talking to landowners about the awesome opportunity they have to have the North Country National Scenic Trail cross their property, please let us know.  Opportunities exist between the Kirkwood Farm south of Rt. 51, through the Darlington and New Galilee areas, to the Edwards Farm west of Wampum, and between Sankey Hill Rd. and Hell's Hollow at McConnell's Mill.

Thanks for all you do for the trail!

Dave Brewer
Trail Work Coordinator