Shenandoah National Park Service Day - April 23, 2022

April 23, 2022 was the "Show Your Love for Shenandoah" event and Charlottesville PATC had a group of nine volunteers to lend a hand on this service day for Shenandoah National Park. This was the inaugural year for the event and the hope is that it will become an annual celebration for SNP during National Park Week and National Volunteer Week. Over 130 volunteers were present from a wide variety of groups including Girl Scouts, JMU Give students, Southern Shenandoah Valley Chapter/PATC, Appalachian Conservation Corps, and Shenandoah National Park Trust board, just to name a few. The Charlottesville PATC team included Brenda and Paul Stephens, Megan Thomas, Doug Stiles, Anne Colgate, Jocelyn Prostko, Lisa Swales, and leaders Mark Perschel and Marit Anderson.

The event began at 9 am in the Skyland Conference Center with continental breakfast provided and t-shirts given to all, followed by welcome speeches by park personnel. The volunteers were directed to the leaders of their team where paper work was signed, safety precautions given, PPE and tools handed out. Each group had different assignments throughout the park with a variety of tasks including trash clean-up, invasive plant pull, ditch clean-up, trail maintenance, dismantling picnic tables, washing decks and weed pulling at Rapidan Camp, clearing Tanner's Ridge land, and maintenance at overlooks. The Charlottesville PATC group was assigned to clear water bars, as well as create new water bars and drainages along the Appalachian Trail from Byrd's Nest #3 to Leading Ridge Trail.  With McLeods and pick mattocks in hand, the nine volunteers hiked the two miles to Byrd's Nest #3 Shelter. Mark gave everyone a tutorial on how to correctly make water bars and drainages. The members were paired up and then got to work! From the shelter we backtracked on the AT putting in the water mitigation devices, which was much needed on this section. We stopped at 1 pm to eat our boxed lunches provided by the SNP event and then wrapped up our work at 2:30 pm, so we could hike the 2 miles back to Jewel Hollow Overlook where our cars were parked. Everyone was sufficiently tired from the manual labor (25 drainages completed) and the hiking, but pleased with the work we had accomplished. We all had showed our love for Shenandoah today for sure!

submitted by Marit Anderson  and photos by Mark Perschel and Marit Anderson