After 20 years, the project to relocate the Appalachian
Trail between Beagle Gap and Little Calf Mountain changed today from a
construction project to routine trail maintenance. At Beagle Gap, a ceremony to
dedicate the new section of trail drew a group of PATC members, Shenandoah
National Park employees, and Appalachian Trail Conservancy representatives.
PATC president John Hedrick addressed a group. Then
Reverend Heather Warren, a trail maintainer, gave a blessing, followed by an
address by Robert Proudman from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.
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| Heather Warren and Shawn Green |
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| Al Dahler center |
We then celebrated by using the trail. Two groups,
intermingled at first, headed up the trail to Little Calf Mountain, where Park
Ranger Betty Gatewood told the group about a project to interest people in the
trail, especially high school students, who have worked with Mark Gatewood of
the Flying McLeods.
The hikers admired the open area on Calf Mountain, which
exists because of the efforts of Andy Willgruber over the last decade, assisted
by other members of Charlottesville Chapter. Then the short hikers returned to
Beagle Gap.
The longer hikers headed toward Jarman Gap, over a
section now maintained by Jeff Monroe. Part of the section is a short
relocation built several years ago. This part of the hike was spoiled by an
encounter with a nest of yellowjackets. The yellowjackets launched an attack
and stung about half the hikers, with Leon Gorman receiving the most stings,
which produced large welts. The winged creatures followed Leon some distance
down the trail.
Upon reaching Jarman Gap, drivers jumped into two
vehicles that were waiting to help with a car shuttle to take everyone back to
the picnic at Beagle Gap.
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| AT District Manager Don White |
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| PATC President John Hedrick (left) ATC representative Bob Proudman |
Iva Gillet had suggested that Charlottesville Chapter
change the previously planned hike to attend this event because it was an
historic event close to us, and a number of chapter members had participated in
the trail building. This event also had important elements of the hike that had
been planned: the hike was short and involved new trail to most people, it
involved food, and it involved major contributions by Andy Willgruber (who was
scheduled to lead the originally scheduled hike).
A large contingent from Charlottesville Chapter and
Southern Shenandoah Valley Chapter attended the festivities and were rewarded
with more interesting food than what many of us normally have on a hike. Mark
Gatewood and others from Southern Shenandoah Valley Chapter set up tents and
signs to make the event more comfortable and to show people that this was not
just a picnic.
Besides PATC president John Hedrick, other figures from
PATC present included Supervisor of Trails Catherine Kelleher (both worked on
the relocation), four past and present chapter presidents, and former SNP
back-country range Shawn Green, who was involved in planning the project. Don
White posted an excellent write-up of the event on southshenandoah.net.
Within a week, as proof that this trail section was real
trail, the first blowdown was reported.
Following the picnic, Andy Willgruber, Marian Styles, and
I headed to the site of the former entry station to clear the remaining
blowdowns on the club’s section of the AT from the June derecho. We followed an
abandoned trail to the AT, then started the walk to the tree where we stopped
last trip.
As Andy had suspected, this proved a difficult job.
Cutting through the tree to near the bottom was straightforward, but then there
were rocks on the ground that a saw would hit. A large lever would have helped,
or we could have spent a much more time cutting out pieces, but we decided to
leave it and clear trees that were straightforward. A week later Andy returned
with appropriate tools and removed the piece of tree blocking the trail.
As we walked on, I kept looking at my GPS to locate the
next blowdown. We checked one branch on the trail and suspected that someone
else had done some clearing, possibly a crew seen by Lindsay Brown a few days
earlier. We found one tree across the trail and a couple of logs that have
jutted into the trail for a while—things that we wanted out of the trail, but
not warranting a special trip.
We found one of the recorded blowdowns, which had several
branches. We reduced it to movable pieces. Our decision to continue up the
trail was correct, rather than assuming all blowdowns had been cleared. We then
found what we suspect is new damage, a tree leaning into the trail because
another fell on it. The leaning tree was not supported, so cutting it did not
carry the usual risks of leaning trees. But collateral damage had occurred in
the form of lost blazes. A few days earlier, Lindsay Brown had repainted blazes
between Rockfish and McCormick Gaps. This last tree we cut had one of his
blazes on it. The same thing had happened on a previous clearing trip.
During the descent at McCormick Gap, I noted some
waterbars filled with soil. A week later after a hike I stopped to clear the
drains and to do a little regrading to reduce water on the trail, plus put in
some effort to slow bittersweet.
These two projects showed a need for wicking hard hats,
to go with wicking shirts, so trail workers do not have hot, wet heads in
summer.
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