reported by John Shannon
Today the goal for Flying McLeods trail crew was to save a
trail section from vegetation overgrowth, something the crew has done a few
times before in the Loft Mountain
area. The section was south of the Loft
Mountain amphitheater, which was had
major overgrowth last summer when illness struck the overseer, and today, we
performed a preemptive strike.
At Rockfish Gap entrance station, the ranger, whom I did not
remember, asked if I was coming to do some work perhaps noticing my Flying
McLeods shirt. After grabbing a weedeater from the new toolbox at Rockfish Gap,
I faced the question of how many Ph.D.’s does it take to put a weed eater in a
sedan. Finally I found something in “History of Trail Tool Transport” and loaded
the tool as in previous years.
At the trailhead, I joined Mark Gatewood and Andy Willgruber
and heard the prospect of rain may have discouraged a couple of others. Regular
member Al Dahler for perhaps the first or second time in the history of the
Flying McLeods did not show, because this multi-talented man was reviewing a
400 page manuscript. So the demographics of the group was the same as usual.
Mark Gatewood saved me some of my usual stumbling when I try
to use weedeater, which happens at most once a year. We waited a while because
rain was falling, but finally set out. Then the usual weed eater experience, it
would not start (it had earlier) and finally Mark Gatewood used his touch to
bring it to life. Mark cut one side of the trail and I cut the other. Andy used
loppers to cut things too high for weedeaters and carried fuel. We used his saw
to cut some the main stem of some enormous bittersweet which had killed a tree;
I stopped at a number of trees during the day to cut smaller bittersweet vines to
give the few trees near the trail a few more years life.
Later I had another inexperienced weed eater user problem, a
blade broke while hitting rocks or solid wood, so a trip back to the trailhead
to get more. Mark used a steel blade on his weedeater like some other
experienced users. Then it was lunch time at an overlook. Because of the
growth, and direction of travel, I did not know where we were on this piece of
trail which I am used to seeing without summer growth, and coming the other
way.
Andy then departed to see the condition of his own section
of AT, and locate the mower he has used on Little Calf. On his way out, he
experienced a benefit of beyond the call of duty trail maintenance at Loft
Mountain, namely seeing a family of
three bears.
Mark and I carried on south to clear the whole length of the
trail. The southern half had less growth than the northern half. To save my
back, we left the weedeaters hidden while we walked back to our vehicles and
drove back to collect the weedeaters then Mark took all PATC tools back to the
tool cache. I stayed a little while to rescue a trail side tree from
strangulation by bittersweet, and also answered a few people’s questions about
which trail to take. At McCormick Gap, I inspected a little of the Chapter’s AT
section and noticed standard summer growth, no garlic mustard after the
previous two pullings and no signs of the recent heavy rain.
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