On June 1st, “National Trails Day,” the PATC
Charlottesville Chapter teamed up with a Charlottesville based hiking Meetup
site, “GetHiking! Charlottesville” to sponsor trail work on a section of the
Great Eastern Trail in Bath County, Virginia.
Although turnout was somewhat disappointing (9 total trail workers,
including 8 PATC members plus the GetHiking! Trail Lead), the results were encouraging.
The section of trail was once known as the Walnut Tree Hollow
Trail (also described as the “Walnut Hollow Trail” and the “old Piney Mountain
Trail” in the PATC’s Trail Guide to Great
Eastern Trail, 2018 First Edition). Due to its remoteness, it may be
the most poorly maintained section of GET in all of Virginia. (It is over an
hour-and-a-half drive each way from Charlottesville to the trailhead.) Chapter President Jeff Monroe had hiked portions
of this trail segment twice in 2018, attempting to complete the trail from both
ends, but found the trail impassible. (Description here: Link.)
The nine hikers changed the trail’s status to “passable”
with their work on June 1, but additional work trips will be needed to get the
trail section into any kind of quality condition, and several very large downed
trees were beyond the certifications of any participant on this trip. The trail remains overgrown over much of its lower elevation, but sections were trimmed back extensively. Downed trees were eliminated as much as time and the group's expertise permitted - we did not have any USFS certified chain sawyers with us, so all sawing was done by hand.
CJ describes some of the work completed by the crew.
Trailhead location:
On the return trip, the group stopped at the recently opened Skipping Rock Brewery outside of Staunton to discuss their day over beer and food. CJ was not successful at Jenga, much to the group's entertainment!
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