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.

wet and happy...

about two inches of rain over the last two weeks. rode into hanover saturday, last day of april--also last full, bright sunny day-until today. my memory is probably 'clouded', but it does seem like there has been more cool and precip than warm and sun lately--like the april showers that were supposed to bring may flowers were a month late. wednesday i rode to canaan elementary in the barest of drizzles. but, coming home was downright wet. hiking with alan thursday he announced, totally serious, "if it starts to rain any harder, i'm bailing." with MOC saturday somebody who wasn't going out with us, commented, "looks like you'll be in the clouds and drizzle all day." with pam sunday morning i reminded her of last week, "hey, it's raining, let's go hiking." i could go on but you might think i was whining!

that ride into hanover was the swan song for long-er rides taken on my dear old pearl izumi saddle. last fall, about ohio, i started noticing toward the end of somedays my penis would be numb. i could still pee but it felt really weird. long story short, i got a new saddle with a cut out to relieve pressure on the perineum... sawyer had suggested this particular model, a brooks cambium 17, and i went for it. now it is on and i am happy so far, but don't have the long miles on it yet to tell if it will actually do the trick. one side benefit right out of the box was it is weather proof! brooks is legendary for its leather bike saddles which don't always appreciate getting wet. the cambium is rubber, cotton, "enhanced by a thin layer of structural textile"! in the week i have had it on it has been rained on three times.

one of those rainy rides was last wednesday. as i mentioned earlier, it was only drizzling on my way to the regular 3rd grade gig. an hour later going away, it was raining fairly hard and i actually turned into our road rather than go the extra mile and a half down to the high school for my it job. i parked the bike and grabbed the truck. i got into work, my jacket and tights pretty much soaked and wondered why i didn't go in the house and change?

the next day, i pedaled off wearing a rain coat. i was heading over to the lower shaker wildlife management area to hike a newer trail with al. he met me with his declaration of leaving if it started raining. i added, "you mean harder?" i threw in the standard dig about you won't melt. he just smiled and mentioned something about being old and a fair-weather hiker. i doubted we would stay dry on this jaunt as it was more than five miles and we always stopped to look at moss, lichen, and such. i kept my rain jacket on...

about a mile up the trail i lost the rain jacket and despite the constant drops of fairly cool rain on the bare arms, it was much more comfortable. looking at the map above, from the parking, follow a solid line heading west, away from the lake, until you get to the dotted line, about a mile up hill. the dotted line runs somewhat north-ish for a couple of miles until it hits another solid white line. we stayed to the right when it forked again and ended back at the top of the upper field and finally t-ed into the main trail headed down and back to the parking area. it is mixed hiking and both alan and i thought it would be a good 'long' loop for the shaker snowshoe fest!

http://www.vernalpool.org/images/105-2YS-egg.jpg

 along our merry way, we veered off-
 trail a bunch. a couple of those times  we went after vernal pools, checking  for salamander eggs. there were  blueish-grey blobs in both looked at, which  made alan quite happy.

where the west side dotted line is bisected by the solid white trail, alan took me off the trail again and showed me a beech with a bear's claws had scarred the bark going up and down it. you can tell the down ones by the lengthy skid marks.
(i will get a better picture soon.)









we were toward the far side of trail, when we came upon a fir that stood out from its neighbors. it actually looked like it had pom-poms at the end of large sticks attached to the trunk instead of uniformly needled branches. pam and i had run across a tree just like this up behind our house on town hill. smaller needled branches littered the ground below both that tree and this one. i picked up a couple and was able to see they had been snipped off--probably with teeth...porcupine(s)! being a fairly heavy animal, they are limited as to how far out onto a branch they can feed. the needle bunches left at the ends of branches clearly showed that. it looked pretty bizarre.

double 'stump' in middle--
one fallen top in foreground...

one last foray off-trail ledus by what i took to be the tree that fell in the woods (a month or so back--scroll down in the "april fools" post) and definitely made a sound as i was there to hear it. about a 100 yards down the hill from where i originally heard it, we found two large downed tops. a double trunk, broken off about thirty feet up, stood a fair ways off, but that made sense as it was really windy that day they fell. the picture i got is not that great, but it shows one of the tops and you can see the trunks in the background.

we got back to al's truck and my bike about four hours after we started. and even though it rained or drizzled most of the way, alan never "bailed". as i rolled down to 4-A, i was already planning to bring pam out on the weekend.

turns out it was raining saturday and sunday. saturday the MOC trail crew, with skip and eben, did our first patrol. we hiked up the south ridge on cardigan and turned south on the skyland trail. i am planning to write something on that day alone--a grand day out deserves its own post!

not that these other days are less grand, in fact sunday was even wetter--how great is that! being mothers' day and having been invited down to sadie's and otavio's for a mid-day dinner, we left the house early and made it onto the trail about 9:30. that may not sound all that early for some, but considering that pam is often just getting out of bed at that time, at least on the weekends, it was for us. and yes, it was raining. nothing a raincoat couldn't handle, but fairly steady. i took her the short, direct way up to find the 'bear claw tree'. (most of these trails have names but i can't remember them.) we snapped a few pictures of that and one of a pileated woodpecker project. the huge pile of chips below the ten foot stump made me laugh, that bird was busy! turned out we watched the movie 'concussion' that night and dr. omalu--brilliantly acted by will smith--mentioned how woodpeckers' tongues wrapped around their brain and acted as shock absorbers. the shock absorption is still up for debate, but they do have air pockets about the brain which help them limit the impact. it was an interesting connection...

and speaking of interesting, we followed the same loop heading north alan and i had, looking for a really ancient sugar house complete with pieces of the evaporator. al and i had taken it out of the duff and set it up on the stone foundation where the trail passed. it looked really cool and you can still read the company name. i tried researching it on the web but didn't find much beyond the mention of the pat. given to the "hartford sorgum machine co." manufacturers of "cory's sugar evaporator"

the rain seemed to be coming down harder and we figured it was about time to turn back, get home, and clean up some. pam was also pretty excited to show me her little "moss mouse house" she had spotted a ways back. it was indeed cute, but looking at the picture we realized, things are just better when you see them 'live'!

"just better...live" does have its limits though. sadie and otavio, sawyer and hannah, gave pam a wonderful mother's day but when we tried to go outdoors to have our cake and eat it too, it started raining. oh well, the company was excellent--it was live after all, inside or out.

trailology 101...

...prepping to take MOC out to work on the mascoma side of the cardigan trails.





hiking with craig sanborn, might not be fast, but it is definitely rich: in trail work history, "we put those rocks there in 1985...that water bar in 2000...those four steps in 2015...", in trail work jargon: "that's a rbdd, rock bermed drainage dip...that rock spine is 'cake'...that one is 'toast'...", and in wit "i could be a professor of trailology--i may not have an endowed chair, but there are plenty of seats up in the mountains!" the chief of the cardigan higlanders volunteer trail crew took me out cruising today for a lesson on how he approaches trail work.




and indeed, work it is: from spring patrolling cutting out blowdowns and trimming new growth, building water bars or drainage dips, putting in steps, laying barricades or scree, to the regular cleaning of drainage. knowing how to use a shovel, mattock, and rake is basic. learning how to fell, peel, and saw trees to size, not to mention moving them, gets more involved. then learning to move and set stone, without wrecking anything--like your back--is yet another critical skill set. all these things, and more, take putting in solid hours; hiking the system, seeing what needs to be done, and doing it makes for good trails. i am looking forward to bringing MOC out and learning the art!

it was a fine day to be on the mountain, a day after our latest snow. it has been such a funny winter and now spring. we get a few days, a week, of warm--warm enough to get a first planting of peas and some greens in--then it dips down below twenty or snows. yesterday we got 3-5 inches of wet snow. it cleared overnight, the temperature dropped, and today at 1 o'clock when i pulled into the summer parking lot, i got this picture at the trailhead:

craig and i hiked and talked, talked and hiked, to just below the cascades, what i have referred to as the waterfall section in previous posts. a former student and MOC member, emily, stopped and chatted a bit when she passed us headed up. three other groups passed us both on their way up and then down. (like i mentioned earlier, we were not fast!) we had a final little discussion at our high point and arranged to meet next, soon, for a bit of paper work. i continued up and craig turned down. soon enough i ran into emily. she was ruddy cheeked from both the temp and the wind up on the bare rock. i got up there soon enough and snapped this picture of the west side of the tower:

the ice/snow was still fairly thick in the trees whereever the sun was not hitting it. i figured it was about 4 o'clock when i headed down myself. with all the snow i decided to take the upper ski trail and risk the underlying ice rather than slush puddles i slogged through after the upper bridge--i think craig called it clifford's bridge. the snow gave me footing for the most part though i did just 'go for it' at the bulge pictured below along with a shot on the left, of the upper section that leads to it:




if skip had been with me, he would have wanted his skis--i can hear him now, "best skiing ever!" well maybe he wouldn't have gone that far--maybe--but not having much to ski on this winter, it was fun to slide fast down this.

i did not slow much the rest of the way either. only once, when i passed a lone hiker resting atop a rock on her way up, fiddling with her earbuds. running downhill has one trick, which is really two, keep your lead foot in front of you and headed for something fairly solid. as i get older i suppose i am also limiting more the vertical i am willing to drop in a single bound. i have gotten good at just touching briefly with one foot on those big drops before switching quickly to the other foot--essentially speeding up until you can slow using your whole body rather than just your legs. it is invigorating, but don't fall--it hurts.

i made it down to the parking lot and saw craig still there, reading in his car. i thanked him again for my lesson and snapped a 5 o'clock picture of the trailhead, in the sun now and sans snow:

as i drove off mtn. i dreamed of future trail work days...that and dinner--i am always hungry.

a rolling stone...

supposedly gathers no moss. al strickland took a few of us out saturday for a hike around the bicknell brook loop over in enfield and showed us a bunch of it--moss that is! armed with field magnifying loupes, an atomizer for hydrating the moss, and al's passion for the miniature non-vascular plants, six of us set off into the woods. the first thing i noticed was that the black flies were out! not in force or biting--yet--but definitely more than a few. black flies 'hatch' in moving water and it being fairly dry so far this spring, i had hopes that this wouldn't be such a bad season. we shall see.

the dry was in evidence on our first couple of stops and al gave the examples a good spritzing as we started examining our first species. at one point, not too long after the start, we took off into the woods headed toward some pink flagging tape. it got swampier and swampier, with blow downs crisscrossing everywhere as we pulled up to a large birch (i think) covered in moss all around. there were two main species that i actually remember and pam took photos of: shingle and frizzy hook. at another off trail spot we saw a third, easier to identify larger species covering a boulder: stair step.

stair step moss

shingle moss

frizzy hook moss

the four-tooth moss is another common moss often found on tree stumps. without a fair amount of practice, mosses in general are not easy to distinguish without magnification. but a few of the species have characteristics that make them apparent even to the naked eye. (i love that expression...!) all mosses grow in wetter areas. some, like the peat mosses, grow in really wet areas. we saw one, spikey peat, in a constant wet spot next to a stream. surprisingly, there is a common moss that grows right in the stream: keeled water moss, sometimes refered to as greater water moss, maybe because it grows up to 15cm long. moss is usually much shorter as it has to get, and retain, nearly all its water through the leaves. right next to the bicknell brook, we found the last two species that i thought were easy to remember, palm tree and wavy starburst.

various moss species, a fern frond, some dead leaves, the bicknell brook...

it is worth noting that we also looked at three or four species of liverworts and the same amount of lichen. one 'leafy' liverwort, bazzania, looks very much like a moss. it has a very distinctive y-branching pattern to its stalks. i showed the group the two common lichen Genera that grow high up in dying or dead fir trees: Usnea and Evernia. the first is the one with an elastic thread of fungus covered by the algae. it is highly sensitive to air pollution carried on blowing winds. the second is a flatter, maybe thicker version, with a fungus that breaks easily and leaves fuzzy ends rather than the thread of Usnea. Evernia is fairly tolerant of air pollution.

we got back to the cars around five-ish with enough moss info swirling around our brains to keep us busy for a while. i will have to pick up the common mosses guide that al's moss mentor helped author with her father and two others. being out in the woods was a great cap stone atop the mornings' work at the ces garden/outdoor classroom. being out-side is always preferable to in-, especially with good people.

speaking of good people, the MOC moonrise sunset hike was taken in by six of us, and one dog, on thursday evening. we left the parking lot around 6:30 realizing that the usual crowd were away at a track meet and waiting around wouldn't grow our group any bigger. the hiking trail was nearly ice free with nothing that couldn't be safely navigated with just shoes or boots. it was cool enough to make hiking along at a fairly quick, youthful rate comfortable. nobody was sweating--too much. just as we topped out and dropped our packs we spotted the moon starting to peak above the eastern haze.

on the western front, the cloud bank was much bigger and i snapped the picture with our band silhouetted against the sun sandwiched between two layers just before it disappeared.

just three other hikers besides MOC were up enjoying the views. we started down when the sun dropped behind the lowest cloud line. it was a very pleasant descent with enough light from the moon that only one headlamp came out, and then only for one particularly 'shaded' gully. a lone car--the other three people on top--remained as we motored off satisfied with april's moon-sun 'ablution'.

a ton and a half more cars greeted pam and i today when we pulled into the parking lot this morning. it was sunday, not too cool, with plenty of blue sky, so i imagined the people with those cars--from all across new england, including new york state--were looking for an outdoor church experience.

folks were fairly spread out along the various trails. we took a few of the ski trail loops to keep that feeling. up at the connector over to hurricane gap and the amc alexandria lodge side there were a few icy spots that were really sketchy. i stepped to the side to let a woman go by and schwoop she skidded off her feet onto her butt. her mother came running up all worried and schwoop, followed her daughter down. i stepped away but remembered that spot for the way down. we made one other stop to take a picture of three younger hikers perched above 'turn around rock' and then made it to the top. i saw an old student--graduated in '97--and got his son to read the anemometer i keep in my pack: 15-20mph.

we ate a snack bar and headed down. just below the waterfall zone, we ran across a hiker that had passed us on the way up and then started the descent before we did. he was clearly concerned and stopped us to report, "we lost an engagement ring somewhere on the trail..." i didn't hold out too much hope for finding it, but i hiked back up a ways and then down again with my eyes glued to the ground. (another eye expression that paints a great image.) no luck, but i left an email address just in case i ran across it later. i ran off to try and catch pam who had kept hiking and caught her on the last ski trail section. long story short, we got home, ate a bit of lunch, and sat down to an email from the couple--"WE FOUND THE RING!!!" that was amazing and made another great end to a fine day.

life is good...!

this time, spring has really sprung!

which comes first, peepers or quackers? to answer that it helps to be outside playing a lot--that and knowing what exactly peepers and quackers are. a peeper is a very small tree frog, Hyla crucifer, commonly referred to as a spring peeper. i learned today that on martha's vineyard they are called "pinkletinks"! they are about the size of a quarter and can make a disproportionately loud peeping sound. 

http://chilmark2641.blogspot.com/2014/04/pinkletinks.html

the wood frog, Rana sylvatica, is a bit bigger at ~2 inches. it has a distinctive black eye stripe that is telltale. while they are not quite so loud, their call is unique in that it truly sounds like some sort of duck, quacking out in the woods. the first couple of weeks these two little noise makers are out advertising for a mate, they go day and night. after a while though they slip into being nocturnally vocal.

http://www.wellsreserve.org/blog/62-frog_quiz_peeps_quacks_groans_snores_and_more

i must say, while i don't always write dates down, april 12 seems to be the earliest i have ever heard either of these frogs. i was outside for most of the afternoon on tuesday during april vacation. at one point i noticed one or two frogs, then a few more joined in, and after a bit there were probably a couple dozen--quackers. it wasn't until thursday the 14, that i heard my first peepers. they were out in the same area, up by the watering hole in the field out behind our house.

over the years past, when i was paying attention, wood frogs consistently sounded before spring peepers, though i must admit, some years i didn't always catch the first voice. i try to check the vernal pools about our area and look for eggs from these two species as well as toads and salamanders. i can remember biking one year when the snow was barely gone and stopping up at the larry pond dam. the water was literally filled with mating american toads, but i don't have a date for that (unless skip remembers...).

amphibians are not the only animals doing their spring thing...the birds are all about 'strutting and flitting their hour upon the stage.' most of the last week, for at least two or three hours a morning, several male tom wild turkeys have been using various spots in the field, as they fan their tails, droop their wings, and cluck circles about seemingly oblivious hens. at dusk and sometimes dawn out by the same water hole with the frogs, you can hear the unmistakable nasal peent of the american wood cock as it paces the ground, just before it flies up in a crazy, loopy pattern and makes some pretty weird noises with its wings. then there is the drumming of the ruffed grouse hidden away in the woods or the more public rapping of chimney flashing by some sort of 'wood' pecker--all these antics, designed to attract females. i wonder if i was anything like that when i first met pam...

some species, namely the phoebe and robin, already have their mates and are working on or even done with their nests. those two have taken over girts on the woodshed and both porches. out in the lower woods, i assume the local barred owl pair is just about to hatch their clutch. taking our weekend walk up and over town hill two weeks ago, pam and i surprised a pair of hooded mergansers in the stream fed pond curtesy of the new beaver dam over in the wet spots above bear pond. the male duck is quite amazing with its bold white crest and rusty sides. the female is no slouch either with her cinnamon-y feathered crest.

(all the bird links come from the incredible cornell lab of ornithology "all about birds" website. you can find live cams for many of the species along with video and sound recordings. caution: it is so good you will not be able to 'leave your screen.' i have even used its recordings to call in birds--like the witchity-witchity-witchity call that thoroughly confused a common yellow throat out off our back porch.)

i could go on and on listing...walking and riding bike everyday allows for seeing a lot more than if you stay in checking your various electronic devices. i ran across another new term today--"screenager!" i dare say though, adults are just as bad, maybe even worse. (all these blogs don't write themselves.) but, don't despair, even going out at night can lead to encounters. pam just about made it to the compost pile tonight, when the humps in the garden she thought were rocks started ambling toward her. she came in pretty excited! i put the computer up and grabbed a light figuring if they were ambling they were probably porcupines and wouldn't be very far. plus, they would give me another species to write about. sure enough, i found them, one ten feet up the birches just beyond the well and the other in the pussy willow shrub (sorry i have no idea what it is...but will try to look it up).

it's always lots of fun around here! don't forget, tomorrow is the moonrise--sunset hike up cardigan. i rode the nishiki up to the summer parking lot today--the gate is open. join us if you can; we start hiking at 6:30.