Hiking Haikus

Berkshire Teen Trail Crew August 10 - 22. 2008

So, it’s the last day on the job here, the last Berkshire VTC entry in the Blog for this season, and the last time I’ll get to talk about how cool we are over in this hilly corner of Mass. Needless to say, I’m feeling a little bit weepy and slightly sentimental. Fortunately, the last crew of the season brought the wit and word power to memorialize all of the reasons that so many of us love our work.

On the Food:

"beans beans beans beans beans

beans beans beans beans onions beans

beans bean beans beans trench."

(Sarah Drinon)

On the Water:

"Don’t like iodine
Filtering water sometimes
Will see in six weeks"

(Sarah Drinon)

On the Woods:

"Bugs are everywhere

1 down, 5 million to go

Extinction is near."

and On the Work:

"Watching Tracey work

Feel lethargic but guilty

Not enough to stand"

(Stephen Barnard)

Finaly, a LNT rap from MC Freshness AKA Doug Thoen: "If you wanna keep a memory take a photo or a picture cause at least then the habitat won't be disfigured

-Leave No Tracey

berksblog

RAIN AND CRUSH! – Berkshire Teen Trail Crew, August 3 - 8

Within thirty seconds of our arrival at Wilbur’s Clearing we were met with a torrential downpour. As we powered on hiking towards our campsite with our awkward tools and heavy packs, we immediately got a chance to see the part of the AT we would be working on, and what obstacles we would face during the week. The trail was wet, to say the least. Previously installed check steps had helped caused mini flood spots on the trail, and bog bridges needed to be strategically moved to trouble spots.

The crew certainly all got very comfortable with working in the mud or at least got to do it far more than any person in their right mind would ever sign up for. However, this mud and constant wetness throughout the week became entertaining in a twisted sort of way. The ridiculousness of it became hilarious. We all dreaded putting on our wet boots so much in the morning that we turned it into a group event. When we were all ready, we would gather around our tent platform and all simultaneously put on our soaking wet boots and socks, and groan, and cry and laugh together, in order to share this unique experience together.

After we were good and soaked, Wednesday rolled around pouring again and the crew came out breathing fire in the face of Mother Nature. With veteran trail crew volunteers Michael Humphry and Greg Hartwich helping lead the way with their crushing expertise and terrific work ethic, this crew ended up getting muddier and working as hard as any crew I’ve seen and maintained off the charts moral and group chemistry through it all.

Something about this crew really made me smile. It was so good to see everyone helping with EVERYTHING. Whenever someone was doing something on the trail, or back at camp, each member of the crew consistently was asking how they could help or what else could be done, which was truly music to the ears of a crew leader. If we decided to turn this week’s crew into a reality show, The Weakest Link, VTC edition, I honestly don’t think we could have found a weak link, because we were tough as nails, and completely unbreakable.

By Thursday, we had completed some truly remarkable work. Using mostly backpacks and buckets, we ferried, in my estimation, about 100 loads of crush from far away back to our work site in order to fill in our turnpike, and cover areas of the trail that were flooded. Useful check-steps were installed on the trail, bog bridges were successfully set and moved, and last but not least, a quality native bog bridge was installed at the last minute with the help of our trusty field coordinator Connor Young.

Looking back on it, I have to say the participants from this week’s crew excelled in working as a team and battled through some of the dirtiest work conditions I’ve seen, impressing me as much as any group of participants we’ve had the pleasure of working with this summer. Well done, gang.

-Brian

In the overwhelming wet muddiness of the week I am sad to say Brian's camera was fatally damaged, thus leaving us with no photos of this great and epic week. If any participants have photos, do send them to mjmoore@outdoors.org. -MJM

berksblog

In Defense of Undetectable Maintinence by Ridgerunner Michael Wood

Here at the Southern New England Office of the AMC, we have been bombing the trails blog with news of our energetic and photogenic Berkshire Teen Trail Crew. However, we run another equally important program out of this office, one which has not had nearly the spotlight of our teen volunteers and their leaders. The Ridgerunners, aside from having one of the coolest job titles you could think of, play an important role in maintaining the wilderness character of the Appalachian Trail. Whereas our trail crews storm in for a week using 18 pound rock bars, pick mattocks, and axes to install durable structures to maintain the trail, the Ridgerunners use subtler tools like education, outreach, and the gathering of statistics to help manage the impact of thousands of visitors in the wilderness. The Ridgerunners certainly engage in their fair share of hard and tangible work like breaking up dozens of illegal firerings, clearing blowdowns, and removing countless 10 gallon bags of trash. But I am grateful to Michael for illuminating the "undetectable" management of the committed volunteers of the AMC's Connecticut and Massachusetts Appalachian Trail Committees, whose decades of stewardship leave a silent legacy, as does the hard work of our Ridgerunners.
-Matt Moore, Southern New England Trails Coordinator

Without working for the AMC you might actually have very little reason to believe that anybody runs the trail. I'm often impressed by just how invisible we seem to be. Granted, there are the few occasions when hiking a work party of some variety sets itself in the middle of the trail, but overall any managers are undetectable.

This is as it should be, and I'll explain why.I believe what makes the Appalachian Trail such a wonderful monument of achievement is its very humility. Unlike the great western monuments of Mount Rushmore or the marble palaces of memory in Washington where the landscape has been so altered as to present at every vista a testament of human greatness, the trail offers a setting of man diminished. Or rather, enhanced by the greatness of an environment in which he offers no greater part than the oak, or the deer, or the millipede.

I have heard several hikers bemoan the trail's many PUDs (pointless ups and downs) and derisively use the term "green tunnel" in their description of the trail, but I feel that it is the very humility of the trail, that it does not offer waterfalls and overlooks at every turn, that is such great proof of its purity. The hiker who grows impatient with a section in which he imagines he is never at a spot deemed sufficiently photogenic is likely to be the same person who behind an automobile demands at least one gawk spot per hour of driving on the highway, one Civil War monument per town when off.

Let me clarify: To be sure, there are many great attractions along the entire length of the trail, but they are spread in such a way as to invite exploration rather than brief, passive observation in the manner of the Youtube generation. And, more preciously than the marbles of the Capital, this monument is impermanent. If left for just a few years, perhaps as little as one, the trail would very well vanish, leaving an archipelago of shelters with no one to navigate between.

No one thinks of the work that goes into building and making the trail. No one should. In the thousands of thru-hikes completed this year I've had a hand by removing a downed tree, or helping clear a drainage, or moving stones for an access. But it's always been in such a way that I've never heard anyone comment on how easy the trail was this particular day. And I hope that invisibility on the part of the caretakers stays maintained. It is a valuable aid to the illusion of solitude in a too-crowded world.

One hiker best expressed it to me when I bumped into him outside of Ten Mile River.

"Isn't it amazing," he genuinely gushed, "how the trail fell where the stones just stuck out like steps."

I agree entirely.
~Michael

Hail to the Red Bench

On August 16, 2008 Saturday Peggy Tucker and I sallied forth to repaint the Red Bench red. The Friday night we washed the bench in preparation for the repainting, dined at the Highland Center and spent the night in the Shapleigh bunkhouse. We had originally painted the bench in late July 1999 after we had adopted that trail. On that venture we had great sunshine and climbed Avalon while it dried. This day would prove to be different.

After procuring the paint for a hardware store in Bartlett, we advanced on our bench. The sun was shining, but we had hints of ‘occasional’ rain. Once there we prepared the bench but there had already been a moment of precipitation. We erected an impromptu shelter with fallen trees as poles, twine and a huge plastic sheet. We pre-painted the bench and went off to do trail work.

Then the heavens opened, thunder echoed across the mountains, and lightning lighted the sky. We hoped it would pass. Instead it began to hail. The covering partly worked and was readjusted. Hours later the sun returned and only huge puddles on the trails provided evidence of the hail storm and stones.

The Red Bench has a new coat of red paint.

Steve Soreff and Peggy Tucker

These guys could give Chuck Norris a run for his money..

Berkshire Teen Trail Crew- July 20 - August 1, 2008

Mount Greylock

Well friends, August is upon us and we’ve rounded out two more weeks of tough work on the trails of old Mount Greylock. We slogged through the first week in the rain, fully observing the need for water bars on the appropriately named "Roaring Brook" trail- debatable whether it was named for the nearby creek or the whitewater nature of the trail during a downpour. The rain subsided, "coincidentally"(I think not!) only after D is for Dena was preparing to depart for the weekend.

M.C.s Matt Double J Moore and Adam (of ATC notoriety) presented a weekend of Leave No Trace ethics and backpacking- with an especially engaging portrayal of “The Lost Art of the Cat Hole” by Adam. No hard feelings here or anything, but they also happened to devour all sauces that would be required later in the week for our well-planned and otherwise delicious meals.

The second week we were joined by the King of Coinage, Slinger of Slang, Duke of Dukes, none other than Chef Pizzadilla himself (sadly, without the spag. sauce). Ready to impress, renewed with vigor, and armed with the knowledge of the previous week, the Crew busted a move (not unlike Chuck Norris) and all told, slammed in a mighty impressive fifteen water bars! That's not to mention the Crew giving an additional sixteen old drainages their due like they were brushing dirt off their shoulders.

The Crew developed quite the close camaraderie after all this hard work, which one could easily glimpse at morning light. We'll let the picture speak for itself.

Here, although no one mentions the late-night games of poker and ongoing adoration of the Texas Ranger, are the accounts of the Crew members themselves. And no, we didn’t pay them to write this.




Jordan:
The work we did consisted of taking large rocks from the forest and putting them in a line on the trail.

Marlena:
I had no idea what AMC Trail Work entailed until this summer. Some will say it’s a “metric butt load” of manual work, but it’s more than just that. The friends made and character gained make this whole experience worth the while (not to mention the sick- nasty AMC Leaders J ) I’m definitely going to remember this and I’ll be back for more for sure.



Eloise:
Good things: showers in the water falls, friends, BEANS, card games
Bad things: storms, bear bags, slugs (on my mattress…!), peanut butter, peanuts…

Allyson:
I was quite unsure of what AMC trail work was. The work was manual and hard, but it felt good to see what we managed to accomplish. The friends you keep you entertained and [there was] laughing no matter what. The AMC Leaders are awesome, hard workers, and they kick a**. It was a great experience and I will not forget it.

Jake:
The remarkable thing about the AMC Volunteer Trail Crew is that it is one of the few places that a group of total strangers can become like family within the short span of a week. Out here in the mountains is really where I want to be- under the rays of the sun-tinted green by the infinite greenery. Out here the air is fresh and the water is pure. And most of all I’ve more interesting and cool people out here in the woods than years in the suburbs or the city. The VTC is a great thing to put on a college or job application as community service. Hopefully it will help me get a job in the Department of Conservation and Recreation and (any) of the UMASS colleges for forestry and environmental science. The heavy duty work, especially with the grip hoist, is very challenging and rewarding; it’s amazing what groups of people can accomplish together. Namely, moving boulders and digging ditches. Anyways this is an amazing experience, for on a journey, it’s not where you are going or what you are doing, but the people you meet that makes it great.

Ben: These past two weeks have been the best two weeks I have ever spent in the outdoors. Excellent food, understanding and friendly crew leaders. And the best: meeting teenagers like me who are interested in forest work and trail maintenance. Learning about LNT (Leave No Trace) was great because it was both a way to preserve the trails and mountains, and a way to lessen my personal impact on the environment. The course was one of the best volunteers programs I’ve ever done!

Mark:
I’ve found that it is quite cool
to have fun (and be worked like a mule)
On the side of a mountain
my weeks were astoundin’
Trail crew did certainly rule!


Tyler:
I was a bit uncertain what the work would entail but it is interesting to see how placing large stones in the middle of the trail is helpful. I’m very glad to have worked on a 2-week crew- the food is very good and balances the work well. I highly suggest trail crew to anyone who likes fun, work, food, and inside jokes.


Noah:
Having no idea what to expect on an AMC Volunteer trip, I was surprised to have such an awesome time. The work was hard, which was not a bad thing. The food was delicious and mostly beans. The people you meet and the experience you have on a VTC will make you want to come back for more time and time again. Hope it doesn’t rain for a week straight next year!

-T-t-t-t-racey!

berksblog

Trails Volunteer of the Month - August 2008

Bill Dotchin

I started thinking about early retirement sometime in 1997. At that time I had no idea what I would do with myself while retired and I began wondering if I should retire at all. I talked about this with my youngest son. He was already into hiking and backpacking and he thought I might be interested in the sport. During the next year he began introducing me to hiking and backpacking. We started out with a 3 day backpack across the Mahoosuc range, 2 weeks backpacking across NH, 2 weeks on the Long Trail, and many day hikes. After all of that I was really hooked on the sport. By the time I actually retired in 2000 I knew exactly what I would be doing to pass the time and keep active.

I started out four days each week working on the most popular hiking lists: the NH 4000 footers, the NE 100 highest and the NH 100 highest. Then I repeated them all in the winter. During all of this I started getting interested in bushwhacking so I started doing the New England 3000 footer list. As of this writing I have finished the MA, VT and NH 3's and about half of the ME 3's.

Since I was thoroughly enjoying myself out on the trails, I decided early on to give back something to the hiking community by adopting a section of the Carter Moriah trail from Zeta Pass to Middle Carter. I worked on this section from 1999 through 2004. Up until the spring of 2005 I was unaware of the Corridor Monitor Volunteer Program, but in June, 2005 I attended an introductory program presented by the U.S. Park Service and the AMC Trails Department. During the presentation I found out that compass skills and bushwhacking experience would be very useful to a corridor monitor. This seemed right up my alley and I was already getting a little bored with regular trail work.

So in 2005 I adopted 2 corridor sections in the Mahoosuc Range between Dream Lake<>

- Bill