#Shenandoah

The Appalachian Trail, September 30 and October 2, 2022 — We’re a month early but my final chapter leading our ridgerunners has been written. Dan Hippe will now keep the flame burning brightly with his capable leadership.

It was a cold and drippy day as Sara and I climbed up to Annapolis Rock one last time to pack up the caretaker site and secure it for the winter. The stuff good enough for next year was packed into the tool box while we carted the UV-rotted tarps to the dumpster at Washington Monument State Park.

Since then, Sara has turned in her radio and keys. She’s hiking all of Maryland’s 41 miles as this is written. I picked her up at 5 a.m. in Harpers Ferry where she left her van, and shuttled her to the Mason-Dixon Line for a 6:15 a.m. pre-dawn start. She expects to finish by 11 p.m. tonight.

My larger role may be changing, but the trail maintenance gig has a long runway in front of it.

The spring on the AT section Caroline and I jointly maintain in Shenandoah National Park was, for all intents and purposes, dry. The ground was saturated but the flow was virtually nonexistent. Tina, my friend of 30 years, Gang of Four hiking group member, and occasional swamper, joined us help remedy the problem.

We dug a catchment basin, inserted a 5 ft. length of PVC pipe and anchored in with large rocks.

It worked! Our next Hoodlums work trip is October 16. We’ll check on it then.

The other reason we were working was to rake and shovel silt out of our waterbars (erosion control structures that direct water off the trail). Our section is particularly sandy and the waterbars need annual cleaning.

This is hard pick and shovel work.

We didn’t count the exact number, but we got three quarters of our waterbars cleaned out. We’ll finish the rest next trip.

Exciting news! After almost two consecutive years working with the Hoodlums Trail Crew and one year co-maintaining this section, Caroline has a trail name.

It’s not something trite like “Sweet Caroline.” Regular readers know that she’s an American/Swiss dual national, so she could have been “Swiss Miss.” It’s far better than those.

Meet Caroline “Dozer” Egli” ’cause she can move dirt.

Sisu

Caroline is a beast!

Shenandoah National Park, March 19, 2022 — The daffodils are up and so is the Hoodlums trail crew. Yesterday 26 Hoodlums gathered in three different places to begin spring cleaning on the north district’s hiking trails.

The three groups gathered at the North Marshall trail head, Piney Ridge and the Pass Mountain blue blaze trail. My assignment was to report to North Marshall where Caroline and I won the bonus prize of breaking big rocks into little ones with sledgehammers!

Ultimately fate spared us and our mission changed. We were dispatched on a blowdown search and destroy mission. So, that’s the story we can tell.

HoodlumsonPass

Photo by Mike Gergely

The Pass Mountain crew, led by Head Hoodlum and north district blue blaze district manager, Noel Freeman, removes a large locust blocking the trail. The trail is in a federally designated wilderness, so muscle-powered tools are required.

BeautyandtheBeast

While everyone else was “working,” Caroline and I were eating blowdowns for lunch with my Stihl MS 261 with a 20″ bar. That’s the military equivalent of an 8 inch howitzer.

Our itinerary included a big honker on the Gravel Spring hut blue blaze access trail, a smaller one on the AT near the Keyser Run parking access trail and several near Beahms Gap and Neighbor Mountain. We left for our first objective at 0920.

A hiker told us the blowdown at Gravel was near the bottom so we used the fire road to get closer. Oops. Not so fast. The tree broke apart after we sawed it. Made it easier to move for sure.

The tree we were after was a hundred yards up hill from the hut. The double trunk and the slope made bucking this one a little more challenging than normal. The base was about 20″, making the salami slices large and heavy. Caution required.

We’re not fake news. Not every chunk we moved went as smoothly as the one at the top of this page.

In this case, Caroline is the “swamper” or sawyer’s helper. Her job is to caddy the saw, and help remove the debris.

Ultimately the path was cleared. The two blowdowns near Gravel Spring consumed nearly an entire tank of gas. In comparison, I can usually saw for an entire day on a single tank. We finished at 1140 and drove to Keyser Run parking for lunch.

Our next objective seemed fairly simple, but it wasn’t. The fall created several spring poles, live trees bent over and held down. Spring poles can be very dangerous. The amount of energy stored in any one of them can be shocking. Don’t let the size of these saplings fool you.

Caroline checks out one of the spring poles. She was surprised at how much energy was released when I demonstrated an improper cut on one of the tiny ones.

The first blowdown at Beahms Gap. It was a single cut. The rest were similar. Nothing found on the hike over Neighbor Mountain. Time out: 1530.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Mother Nature never seems to run out of blowdowns. That said, Caroline was disappointed that she didn’t get to bust rocks. Maybe next time…

Sisu

A fork in the road

Yogi said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." So I'm following the white blazes.

Seasons end but the work lives on.

Hoodlums spring cleaning!