Trail up Shortoff

Date of work: 11/6/2010
number of workers: 1 (Jim de Friess)
time spent: 7.5 hours- includes commute

Work done:  Continued from where I left off.  I made or opened water bars, lopped the bigger trees, then sheared the trail and pushed uphill.

I went out there today thinking I was close to a turn west switchback, and then not far from MTS.  As it turned out there are two abrupt left (west) turns and I started out below the lower one.  I ended up at the upper one, and then walked up to the MTS intersection.  293 times my right foot touched on the way back to where I stopped.  From there I covered about 270 right foot touches then coming back down the hill to where I started the day, and from where I stopped work back down to the truck was 1080 right foot touching.  So I'm three fourths of the way up.  Anything else up to now has been a guess, now I have data.

Very interesting day, there was horseshoe prints in the trail, but no trail apples.  One place where the horse appeared to have done the other.

Several middle aged men passed by "been hiking up Shortoff for 25 years", all were appreciative and said they were glad the trail was getting some attention.  It was several groups, that said the same thing, all from the triangle (Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill area).  One wanted to know where he could send money to support trail work.  Had I been thinking - I should have said I would take his donation- just kidding.  Seriously if I can get some business cards with an AAT contact number, email address, etc- I could just pass them out to anyone that expresses interest.  Lots of middle aged (50s) men camping on Shortoff tonight.

I think working that trail on a weekend as busy as it is, is great exposure for the AAT program.

I had two guys pass me, one is a neighbor of my first WPCC boss.  We talked about him in a good way.

Two weeks ago I was sweating and hot out there doing trail work. Today I looked out and would have sworn I saw snow squalls off in the distance.  Guess what one came over me and, it was snow.  I worked in a couple of brief flurries.  The cooler weather helped my stamina as well.  The wind picked up at sunset, and it was a low hanging sun, and chilly in the shade walking out.

This now makes two consecutive Saturday adventures in the gorge.  Totally awesome.  On next Thursday I hope to do some work on Rock Jock - the South end.

Good days in the woods.