Walking my property with the dogs this weekend I saw a lot of buckthorn and thought it would be a lot easier to deal with it now than summer.
Love hearing your positive experience as trail crew. I finished my ADK 46-er hikes last fall and I’ve been thinking of giving back to the trails and organization with trail maintenance this summer!
I hope you give it a try (and please give me an update if you do)! It's a great way to meet other people who love the outdoors and it is incredibly satisfying to see the impact that a dedicated group can make.
Friday was great. When I got up after a few hours of sleep (thanks Delta Airlines for the major delay) and saw that it was -8 oF in Delafield, I had second thoughts, but all the friendly familiar and new faces got me into the spirit. Once my toes warmed up, I was happy to be there. I had to tap out on Saturday due to illness, so I'm excited to go back and see what got done.
One of my favorite moments of the project happened on Friday morning when I realized that someone on my crew that day had also been on my crew at the Hartland Marsh project last year! She said that she wanted to start coming to more trail crew events, but was waiting until she became a Thousand Miler (estimated finish date of May 2026) because she was worried that if she started volunteering regularly she would never actually finish hiking the trail! It made me laugh because I had a plan to finish section hiking the IAT before I started volunteering and then those plans got totally knocked off course by trailbuilding. My trail miles are significantly lagging behind my volunteer hours!
Thanks for doing the good work you do, and in frigid conditions!
Luckily the fires of burning buckthorn were hot so I wasn’t cold for long!
Walking my property with the dogs this weekend I saw a lot of buckthorn and thought it would be a lot easier to deal with it now than summer.
Love hearing your positive experience as trail crew. I finished my ADK 46-er hikes last fall and I’ve been thinking of giving back to the trails and organization with trail maintenance this summer!
I hope you give it a try (and please give me an update if you do)! It's a great way to meet other people who love the outdoors and it is incredibly satisfying to see the impact that a dedicated group can make.
Friday was great. When I got up after a few hours of sleep (thanks Delta Airlines for the major delay) and saw that it was -8 oF in Delafield, I had second thoughts, but all the friendly familiar and new faces got me into the spirit. Once my toes warmed up, I was happy to be there. I had to tap out on Saturday due to illness, so I'm excited to go back and see what got done.
One of my favorite moments of the project happened on Friday morning when I realized that someone on my crew that day had also been on my crew at the Hartland Marsh project last year! She said that she wanted to start coming to more trail crew events, but was waiting until she became a Thousand Miler (estimated finish date of May 2026) because she was worried that if she started volunteering regularly she would never actually finish hiking the trail! It made me laugh because I had a plan to finish section hiking the IAT before I started volunteering and then those plans got totally knocked off course by trailbuilding. My trail miles are significantly lagging behind my volunteer hours!