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| water diversion at Rockfish Gap |
Fine weather made this a great day for John Shannon and Marian Styles to inspect Charlottesville Chapter’s section of the Appalachian Trail (Rockfish to McCormick Gap) for fallen trees after recent storms and high winds. We started walking over trail regraded in January; John hopes that more extensive earth removal will reduce future cleaning of drainage structures.
Nearing the middle of the trail section, we met a southbound hiker who reported two trees across the trail a little south of McCormick Gap. Before heading for these obstructions, we stopped to remove an 11” tree that had fallen across the trail. For this task, John’s large folding saw, which had been recommended by a Southern Shenandoah Valley Chapter member, worked well. It also worked great for reaching broken branches above our heads.
That job completed, we fetched our car from Rockfish, drove to
McCormick Gap, and quickly found the first downed tree. Removing poison ivy
from the tree was tedious, but the two cuts to remove it went quickly. We walked
on and found the larger fallen tree, which our helpful hiker had accurately
estimated the size of. We used the folding saw to remove a 10” branch and a 12”
section on the main trunk. The chapter’s cross-cut saw proved useful to cut through
an 18”section of trunk. We then spent some time freeing a small tree that had
been bent and trapped by the large tree.
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| Cutting large logs with large saws |
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| Marian Styles cutting part of the large blowdown |
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