Reported by John Shannon
In Charlottesville, Hurricane Sandy seemed just a windy day with more rain than normal for one day, so my first reaction was that nothing happened to trails. However, a week later Staunton River Trail looked like a min-derecho, so I thought our section of AT might have received some storm damage. Marian Styles joined me on an inspection of the AT between Rockfish and McCormick Gaps.
Although the entrance station ranger did not have any damage reports, we found ten trees down. Most were dead or had some decay, and none was a serious obstacle. Nevertheless, we cleared these aesthetic problems by means of sawing and dragging. We left one easily-stepped-over, solid ten-plus-inch log, which we could not have moved even if we had finished cutting through it.
As usual, our work involved some minor clipping, and some of the trees that fell during the derecho had moved so that they now needed some pruning. It is always invasive plant season; today we encountered a few Oriental lady’s thumbs with seeds on, but so few relative to the many earlier whose seeds have fallen that it was not worth pulling them. And now garlic mustard rosettes were all along the trail, preparing for next season.On a social note, halfway along the trail we met a former SNP Central District manager, Melanie Perl, who was hiking north.
No comments:
Post a Comment