Decrepit Barn, Log Cabin...and Ultrarunning

Seen on the way to pick up Mister Tristan (the 8 year old human being, not the blog).  The barn is right off a busy highway:

Image credit Gary, near Martinsburg, WV

Not so another old building, this one a log cabin--which I was privileged to literally stumble upon in a back country run.  I previously posted about that log cabin back in the spring of 2013 in a post I called Getting "Lost" Pays Dividends:

It's interesting to speculate when this place was last lived in and by whom....

Ghost Gourds and Trail Work

Image credit Gary

Ysetertday was a good day.  A very good day.

I painted these small homegrown birdhouse gourds for a loved one to use as Halloween decorations for a "Haunted Hospital" function at her vet's office.  Coffee cup included for scale, besides the fact that coffee is everything.

The bulk of the day was spent doing some trail work along the Tuscarora Trail north of here.  This was with a crew of 3 long distance hikers who were at Shippensburg University for a hikers' annual gathering with the group ALDHA (Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association). 

The gathering being over, these guys remained to donate a day of trail work. We weedwhacked and cleared blowdown trees from 2.5 miles of the trail, which has been kinda neglected for a couple of years as there is no volunteer overseer for that stretch.

Sunny blue skies, common purpose, stunning autumn foliage along a Pennsylvania ridgetop....doesn't get much better than that!

Which brings me to the topic of nicknames.  The ALDHA hikers I worked with--whose work was greatly appreciated--were trail named Canada Goose, Cool Breeze, and Spirit Hawk.

As we sat around at a picnic table at a convenience store on the way home, enjoying a cold soda, the hikers addressed each other using trail names.  Like "Hey, Canada Goose, how long will it take you to drive back to Quebec?"

Though we had just shared blood, sweat and tears along the trail (literally!), I just could not bring myself to use trail names in conversation; it just seemed too strange.  Of course, as I have previously blogged, I have a strong aversion to nicknames.  You may want to go read that post, here.

Tough Trail Work

A work group from the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) called he Cadillac Crew came to our local section of the Tuscarora Trail to assist with some weed whacking this past weekend.  I was not along on this particular trip, but I had been weed whacking on the Tuscarora Trail solo two weeks ago since I knew I could not join this particular effort.

My forward progress was 1/4 mile per hour.  The briars were chest high and the trail was all but impassable.  My hat is off to the Cadillac Crew members who came out to assist, because if the main through trail, the Tuscarora, is not maintained and open, then all the good work I may do to keep my feeder trail (Reese Hollow) and backpacker's shelter spiffy goes for naught.

Anyway, here's the trip report from the crew's leader.  Sounds like a struggle:

Work on the TT this past weekend almost killed a few members of our crew, myself included.

The larger contingent went up the trail from Little Cove and took a left. We worked from where it was impassible till it seemed to descend from the ridge. A few made the decent but I ran out of water and string for my string trimmer so I'm not sure how much further they got. They were beyond my hearing of their brush cutters. We all got stopped by a lack of water.

I have no idea what distance we cleared, we waffled between just clearing a path and trying to clear enough so it wouldn't have to be redone in a month...

A smaller contingent went up the Alice trail. I didn't really condone this and wanted them to come down from Hells Hill but I couldn't convince people to go up Hells Hill again after our experience last year. They cleared a few blowdowns on the Alice and felt they made good progress North on the TT from the Alice. They had a much easier time, reporting that they mainly cleared vines that were knee high vs the shoulder high thorny stuff my group was clearing.

Sunday we didn't have the energy to hike all the way out to where we stopped so we went up to Rt 16 and worked our way south. It was pretty much lawn(&fern) mowing exercise, some places the trail was totally obscured but not with anything a string trimmer couldn't take care of. We only had 4-5 people working this stretch for a half day and we didn't meet up with where they had stopped the previous day.

I understand another crew is going out this weekend, one of our guys is contacting them to let them know where we got to. I'm not in a position to have the crew go out in August, 2 trips in a row to the same area was enough, especially if the weather is similar in August as I suspect it will be. I'm looking at options for August, one option would be to pull the November work at Silberman up to August so we could go back out to the TT when the weather is less harsh and to give us a variety of work before returning to the TT.

Since Cadillac did so much work on the TT relocation, we are obviously dedicated to this trail. I think we can plan at least 1 trip a year to go do maintenance on the TT in this area since it gets so little support. It would be better to do it when the weather is more conducive to carrying tools great distances and fighting the dragons we fought this past Saturday.

We could use some more help!

Reese Hollow Trail and Shelter ATTABOY!...and Ultrarunning

From Facebook, comments from a northbound hiker on the Tuscarora Trail:

After passing the Hell’s Hill Trail the trail got a lot better. We were following the ridgeline and the rocks became a lot easier to cross. There were fewer boulder fields and the trail seemed to be in a lot better shape. By 3:30 we reached the long trail down to Reese Hollow Shelter and began our descent.

Initially the descent was relatively steep, but after a few hundred feet the grade lessened and the yellow-blazed trail made its descent into the shelter. We crossed two side trails before dropping down into a heavily wooded glade where we found the shelter. Johnny B and I both remarked that this was the furthest that we had ever hiked off the main trail to get into a shelter for the night.

However, the long descent was worth it! Reese Hollow Shelter is a wonderful site. It is a large, single decked shelter with a large overhanging porch covering a picnic table. Although we generally aren’t into campfires there is a really nice enclosed fire pit at the shelter. The shelter maintainers have done a wonderful job with this site! The piped spring is about 150’ from the shelter. The privy is above the shelter and it is a nice one…and the maintainer even provides toilet paper! This is a Hilton among shelters!

We settled in for the night. It cooled off nicely and because of the shelter’s easterly location in a deep hollow it got dark early. By 6:30 we were already using our headlamps. It was an early night – we were exhausted. I tried to stay awake, laying on my sleeping bag and listening to the sounds of the evening. 

Comments like this make trail and shelter overseers like me glow with pride.  I am proud of my work at Reese Hollow for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) and am happy to be able to enhance the outdoor experiences of other hikers.

And I must put in a plug for volunteerism: these trails do not maintain themselves!  Whenever you go for a trail run, there's a whole organization--largely invisible--that supports trail construction and maintenance.  An organization comprised of individuals like you and me, who enjoy having trails and want to give back by working on said trails.

So...if you are an Ultrarunner, you should also be a trail maintainer.

Yellow Flowers on the Tuscarora Trail

I don't know what these guys are, but for a stretch they dominated the trail a couple weeks back when I took this shot.  I have a good Audubon wildflower guide, just lack the motivation to key it out.

[image credit Gary]

The plant was a single upright stem about waist high, terminating in these showy yellow posies.

More Trail Work...and Ultrarunning

On Monday I headed up Alice Trail to its junction with the Tuscarora Trail for some serious weed whacking of briars.  This is in southern PA, just south of where the Tuscarora crosses PA Rt 16 between Mercersburg and McConnellsburg, and heading south from there.

But first, the installation of a signpost I had made to mark that junction.  Up there on the narrow Pennsylvania ridgetop there is a scant covering of dirt, then the underlying rock.  I had hauled up a digging iron to try to make a hole...the best I could get was about  12" deep after several test holes, so I resorted to piling stones around the post as in a cairn.

At the bottom of the buried end of the post I had inserted a 12" piece of re-bar laterally through the post.  When the dirt and small rocks are firmly tamped down around the post, the re-bar serves as a physical deterrent to someone (or some bear, seriously) trying to pull out the signpost.

The signpost is quite stable and should last awhile.  Of course, in the backcountry, if someone wants to destroy a trail sign with bullets or brute force, they'll do it.  I hope that the remote location weeds out the idiot faction, and only serious hunters and hikers will pass by here.

The weed whacking went slowly.  Very slowly.  As in forward progress of about 1/2 mile in 90 minutes slowly.

I was assisting my trail buddy Peter, who's is the overseer for that portion of the Tuscarora.  The briars in some places had rendered the trail  almost impassable in a practical sense.  The technique we resorted to in a few areas of particularly heinous briars was to bring the weedwhacker down from about 6' up, chewing up the briars from top to bottom.

This section, to my knowledge, had not been cut in 2013, so this was 2 years of growth.  My hope is that with the briars now cut back to a 6' trail width, future weed whacking efforts will be more akin to maintenance than (virtually) cutting new trail.

The link to Ultrarunning?  I love trail running.  Somebody has to maintain those trails.  It's pretty simple.

Oh, and another reason:

Box turtle on the Alice Trail.  All photos by Gary.

Trail Maintenance...and Ultrarunning

Was up on Monday to "my" Reese Hollow Shelter and Trail where I am the volunteer overseer for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC).  There were several inches of snow on the ground, which made for slow going, but all in all it was a fun trip.

It was part winter hike and part work trip.  The primary purpose was to install some trail marker signs and to clear a couple blowdown trees that I had noted on my last trip a few weeks back.

For those of you anal about signs, here's the progression of work:

Info carved with Dremel tool into pressure-treated decking board

 

Next, painted Rustoleum brown

 

Letters painted white

 

 

Installed on sign post

 

 



 

Note that I don't have a router but the Dremel tool makes a pretty decent substitute...with a bit of practice.

Oh, the connection to Ultrarunning is obvious: trail construction and ongoing maintenance don't just happen.  I obliviously ran for many years on trails all over the country without thinking too hard about their origins and ongoing existence.  But over time awareness dawned and I began to think about how I could give back once I had more time.  With retirement, I had no more excuses so I signed up with PATC and truly enjoy the volunteer work.

Tuscarora Trail Maintenance

I was over at the Tuscarora Trail on Thurs this week doing some weedwhacking of the rampant briars and weeds along the ridgetop trail.  Due to disease and insects, many of the trees along the crest have died (gypsy moth, oak leaf roller), letting more sunshine reach the ground, resulting in a veritable explosion of weedy understory growth.

The trail is barely passable in certain parts between PA 16 south to PA 456--long pants and long sleeves are a necessity or you'd be cut to ribbons by the briars.

So, although my official overseer duties are limited to the Reese Hollow Shelter and the Reese Hollow Trail, there's not much point in having "my" trail (which links the valley access point with the ridgetop Tuscarora Trail) be all spiffied up with nowhere to go after you reach the top.  So I pitched in.

Let me tell you, this type of weedwhacking is pretty arduous.  My objective was to cover the 3 miles between Hell's Hill Trail and Reese Hollow Trail, heading south to north.  However, due to me going off trail on my way up the poorly marked Hell's Hill Trail and veering south somewhat, I reached the Tuscarora perhaps a mile south of the Hell's Hill junction (towards the Yellow Trail).

Thinking the day would go faster, I just began my weedwhacking there.  Turns out in actual experience, my pace was about 1/2 mile per hour, so in 5 hours of work I was able to cover perhaps 2.5 miles...at best.  By the end of the time I was pretty much shaken to pieces from the incessant vibration. 

Left undone is approximately 2 miles of trail directly south of the Reese Hollow Trail junction heading towards the junction with Hell's Hill Trail.  So another trip is required, but this time hopefully the overseer for this section will be back from a trip and we'll be able to team up.

A Trail Dream Come True

[image credit Gary]

A couple days ago I fulfilled a lifetime fantasy--I painted blazes on "my" Reese Hollow Trail, where I recently began volunteering as overseer with the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC).

I've done other work this spring at the trail and shelter (where I am also overseer), but when I actually wielded the paintbrush and carefully refreshed that very first old and faded yellow blaze mark on that young oak, I felt tears welling up in my eyes.  It was now bona fide and official--I was a real trail volunteer, part of a largely invisible army of other such volunteers, not only here in PA with the PATC, but across the whole length and breadth of these United States.

I've been a trail runner for years and always knew that the trails did not mysteriously appear and then maintain themselves; of course there was a behind-the-scenes organization and individuals who actually did the real work.  It was always my dream to volunteer "sometime," when life and circumstances permitted.  With retirement I finally felt I had the time to give back and be a producer of sorts rather than simply a consumer.

The Reese Hollow Trail is a short feeder trail to the major north-south Tuscarora Trail that runs some 250 miles from Carlisle, PA to Shenandoah National Park in VA.  Since the Tuscarora is largely a ridge top route, water and shelter are a problem.  So the Reese Hollow Trail was developed to serve as an access point to the Tuscarora and to bring hikers down off the ridge to the new shelter and a reliable spring.

 

 

[image credit Gary: toad at the base of the recently-installed bear pole at Reese Hollow Shelter--looks like she/he approves.]

 

 

Volunteer Trail Work: Reese Hollow Shelter

[Reese Hollow Shelter; photo by Gary]

On Friday, Mister Tristan (the 5-year-old human being, not the blog) and I (Gary) met a couple other volunteers for some work over at the Reese Hollow Shelter.

This shelter serves the Tuscarora Trail in south-central PA via a 1-mile yellow-blazed trail that comes down from the Tuscarora Trail up on the ridgetop, to the shelter and spring.  This is just west of Mercersburg, PA.

The main task this day was to relocate the fire pit, which was a tad too close to the shelter and not big enough, say, for a group of scouts to gather comfortably around.  We scraped away the leaf litter and soil in a 10' radius, then dug down another foot or so to bare mineral soil in a 3' circle for the pit itself.  Then we lined the pit with large (say 100 lb) rocks and extended the rock apron another couple feet wider.  Last step was to create sitting benches of downed locust logs from up the slope a bit.

This was my first organized work trip since assuming overseer duties for the shelter and trail in Dec 2012, and I learned a lot.  I expect to be spending many happy, pleasantly tiring hours doing this volunteer work.  I can truthfully say that this day was one of the best of my life.

I was hoping to post a photo of the firepit--which is the best firepit I have ever encountered along any trail, seriously--but all my shots of the firepit included recognizable facials of Mister Tristan himself.  So I'll take some other photos next trip.

 

Critters in Tuscarora State Forest (PA)...and Ultrarunning

Background first, then the photos....

My local paper ran a story a couple weeks ago about the Golden Eagle Project to document populations and possible dangers of wind turbines.  Dr. Todd Katzner of WVU is heading up the study.

Katzner's consortium of scientists and conservation groups has started using radio telemetry and automatic still and video camera setups baited with road-killed deer to discover the areas where the birds are most concentrated. Some of those cameras are set up in an undisclosed location in the Tuscarora State Forest.

The photos can be stunning. The bait draws more than eagles. Spotted so far have been coyotes, raccoons, spotted skunks, once thought to be rare, and even a fisher, a large member of the weasel family once extinct in Pennsylvania but re-introduced through a captive breeding program.

Photos from the Tuscarora camera site can be seen at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tuscarora-State-Forest/156162057781514.

Note: the following photos come from that site, but since I rarely do Facebook I have huge problems navigating it.  I never was able to locate the fisher photo that was mentioned.

I do some running over there (next county west, some 20+ miles away).  The Tuscarora Trail goes thru this state forest.

I better keep my eyes peeled!