volunteer trail crew...

patrolling with MOC... having passed my introductory trail maintenance instruction hike, craig sanborn gave us our first assignment, to cruise the skyland trail and clear the winter debris from south ridge of cardigan, over orange, brown, and church mtn.s, to the trailhead on the alexandria end. first craig helped me spot a vehicle on the far side and soon after we made it back to the summer parking lot on cardigan, students started to show.

we ended up with four students: olivia, ben, haily, and julia, plus skip and eben (the oldest pendleton boy and an early MOC alum). after an introduction to the tools craig was loaning us--folks, meet loppers, bow saw, and hand clippers--we took a traditional picture, loaded bags, and headed up the trail.

it was a lively bunch and i had a big smile listening to eben talking the "old days" when he was at mascoma, comparing that with what the others were telling him was going on now. it always amazes me that while things do change, they also stay the same.

some debris here and there, but basically things were clean. i started putting a stepping stone here and there in wet spots where i hypothesized things might dry out eventually, but not anytime soon. we crossed a couple extended in-trail pools that skip declared ripe for a "bog bridge"! constructing a good bog bridge is a lot of work, but when done right, where needed, just what the doctor ordered. the twist for this trail is that it is not hiked all that much and hours spent here don't 'pay back' as well as on other trails. i put it on my mental inventory to run by craig.

passing over the bald lookouts on orange mtn we decided to stop for lunch and take in the view. things being totally socked-in, i gave a lichen lecture with the two samples i found back on the trail and stuck in my pocket. as mentioned in an earlier post, Usnea and Evernia are similar Genera of foliose lichen, both growing in the tops of dead or dying firs.

a break on the trail...having lopped a bit of brush here and there, cut and moved only three or four blowdowns, hiking went pretty quickly. after orange mtn the trail is even less traveled. it winds along a ridge of sorts, over grafton's knob, crane mtn, brown mtn, and finally church mtn before dropping down to the trail head on a steep back road, church hill road, just north of alexandria four corners. it is a good path and in the early spring, very open, even in a thick fog. as you near the eastern end--in alexandria--there are some interesting features.



first, one sees a fair bit of old logging scars, mainly ruts and stumps, off to the sides of the trail. at some point in the past, a lot of trees were removed from this area

second, on a fairly flat area near the end, we came across a long abandoned log cabin with a collapsed roof about twenty meters off to the side of the trail. the group did a bit of exploring and i snapped a photo.