It was a beautiful early spring Saturday for a joint trail maintenance project between the PATC Charlottesville and South Shenandoah Valley chapters along with the Virginia Environmental Law Forum@UVA Law School. Mark Gatewood (PATC SNP South Associate District Manager and SSV chapter stalwart) chose a relatively steep A.T. on the south side of Bear Den Mountain for trail improvement and supervised the day's work. We spent the morning rebuilding and cleaning drainage outflows from waterbars, sometimes installing stepping stones on the downhill side. The work was spearheaded by C-ville chapter's John Shannon and UVA Law's Olivia Glasscock.
We enjoyed a pleasant and sunny lunch at the famous tractor seats on top of Bear Den Mt. (only two seats remain!). Mark photographed the three towers no longer in use which are scheduled to be taken down soon. We hiked back south on the A.T. to conclude our work for the day. This involved more waterbar repair along with building several "mini" check-dams using the plentiful greenstone all around us. Time seemed to fly this day and it was 3:00 before we knew it; Mark called it a day.
Before putting away the camera, the author noticed some Bloodroot blooming on a bank just below McCormick Gap. This beautiful harbinger of spring was a nice antidote for the greening and plentiful privet, multi flora rose and oriental bittersweet we had encountered earlier this day!
No comments:
Post a Comment