Reported by John Shannon
On April 27, one of several PATC activities was the South District Trails Workshop, being offered after a break of a couple of years. This year the workshop was at Schairer Trail Center.
The event attracted some familiar faces, including cabin people Mary and Thomas Jorgensen, who were there to cook and do some cabin work. The three official presenters were District Managers Don White and Mark Gatewood as well as new District Manager for blue-blazed trails, retired SNP ranger Steve Bair. Five people from the Appalachian Trail relocation project at Little Calf Mountain attended, and three others. Three members of Charlottesville Chapter attended (Andy Willgruber, Briana Taylor, and I).
The program featured talks on the history of trails in SNP, how to avoid injuries, and how to clear vegetation. I gave a talk on invasive plants—a talk that I didn’t know ahead of time I was slated to give.
The workshop included practice doing vegetation clearing. We also built a log waterbar, did some trail regrading and widening, and cut a log with a pruning saw and a two-person cross-cut saw.
Following talks on blazing and filing work-trip reports, several people said that they needed to leave, despite the tempting fragrance of dinner being cooked.
One tangible benefit of the workshop was that at least two attendees signed up to be trail overseers. And a participant who has considerable trail experience said that the workshop had taught him how a waterbar should be laid out. For some of us, the most useful part of the day was making or renewing contacts with other trail people.
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