AT between Rockfish Gap to Reeds Gap
On Saturday, the club's AT maintainers and volunteers had a potluck lunch to get together and celebrate a very busy year of trail work and to get the new year off to a great start. During work trips, we briefly see each other in the parking lot(s) and at the tool shed, and perhaps after the trip at dinner, but most of the time, we don't have the opportunity to socialize as a group that is larger than crew size. Every year has its challenges, but 2013 particularly so with both personal and trail challenges (shelter fire, for example) that had to be overcome. As always, everyone rose to the occasion, pitched in, helped each other out with support and hard work to make 2013 a very successful year with lots of significant projects completed, the trail in overall good shape, and all of the 'section maintainer' positions filled.
It is not a prerequisite that maintainers/trail volunteers be wonderful, humorous people who are great friends and dedicated to the club's mission of maintaining the AT, but they all are. It's also not a prerequisite to be a great cook (or married to one), but the food that shows up at these potlucks is always varied and delicious. When you put it all together ..... great folks and great food, it never fails to be a wonderful time and something we look forward to as the January potluck has quickly become a maintainer tradition.
There was a brief 'taking care of business' review by the Trail Maintenance Supervisor, but the goal of this particular potluck was to keep it 'light' and fun (mission accomplished!). There were various posters and displays set up for folks to look at .... the most popular appeared to be the slide show of pictures from the trail: projects, crews, mountain and trail scenery.
Thanks to everyone who helped set up the room where we met and also to those who made short work of cleaning everything up after the potluck. These are the "before we ate" pictures:
There was plenty of time for socializing as folks arrived and during the "feasting" and nobody left hungry! There was a good variety of food and plenty of dessert if you had any room left for it.
During the potluck we celebrated Fran's birthday which was a few days before. Over the years, her personal pulaski has been on many maintenance trips and Konnarock crews and since her name 'Fran' was written on it, the call down the crew line was often "pass 'Fran' up here" when a pulaski was needed. Fran (the pulaski) disappeared recently and after multiple searches, was finally located in the tool shed. It appears the problem in finding 'Fran' was because the identifying name had faded down to a couple of faint letters which made 'Fran' hard to distinguish from the club's tools. Fran (the person) was very glad to be reunited with 'Fran' (the pulaski). There was also a card, flowers and a birthday cake - Happy Birthday, Fran!
We all had a great time at the potluck and are anxious for the weather to break so we can get back to doing what we love to do: working on the AT to keep it in great shape while we enjoy the outdoors and all that the trail and nature have to offer while we're out there. In the meanwhile, with the AT weather in full 'Winter mode', non-mountain work trips to help out James River Parks and also Cyrus at JRNWR/ Presquile NWR are in the planning stages (determining dates/locations). Keep an eye on the 'Work Trip Dates' tab on the blog for dates and details.
Thanks to all for a very successful 2013 and
Happy Trails & Maintaining in 2014
to all our terrific section maintainers, sawyers, and volunteers!
♦ ♦ ♦
(Photos: Merlot)
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