Maintainer Potluck 2014

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.

Sweet and sour meatballs

Broccoli Salad Supreme

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)

Maintainer Potluck (Food & Social) - Jan. 19, 2013

A very nice 'thank you' from Ranger Ted

(from the Humpback Rocks Visitor Center and Mountain Farm exhibit at BRP milepost 5.8)

 

It turned out to be a great day for the annual maintainer potluck since snow and ice were surely on the AT after Thursday night's snow storm. The roads in town and the parking lot were clear, so it was off to the church fellowship hall to set up for the potluck at 12:00. Lori and Fran, with help from Radar, set up tables, chairs, a drink station and buffet line. 

 

Covering the tables and setting up displays.

 

The drinks station and buffet line ..... ready to go as potluck dishes begin to arrive!

As folks filtered in, they could look at the club display, see a slideshow of scenic and maintainer pictures from the trail, review the new 'FAB' (First Aid Bag) contents, see a map of the Rockfish to Reeds AT marked with trail sections/section maintainers, and pick up a free T-shirt if there was one in the pile that caught your fancy. Groups gathered to chat which is probably second only to the food as the favorite aspect of these potlucks .... section maintainers, maintainers and volunteers, all getting a chance to spend some social time together off-trail.

Checking out the displays and social time.

The FOOD ..... I will let the pictures speak for themselves. I apologize to anyone whose dish I might have missed (I didn't get pictures of everything) and if I've attributed food to the wrong person(s) or described it incorrectly, please let me know so I can fix it ... see 'contacts' tab for email address.

Salad: Dave & Chris W.; Deviled eggs (with horseradish!): Fran L.

Bulgur-Quinoa-Couscous Salad: Bob K.; Green bean casserole: ??;

Baked potatoes w/ the 'fixins': Dave A.

Pork loin w/rosemary & fig sauce: Mark H. ; Lasagna - two kinds: Lori A.

Wicked Wienies: Merlot; Black bean chili: Chris W. (Beerman)

Pies!! Homemade pie bottom right: Greg H. ; Irish Cream Bundt Cake: Karen H.

RECIPE LINKS - if you would like to share the recipe for a dish you brought to the potluck, please send it to me and I'll be glad to add it to this post & the 'Recipe' Category on the blog.

Bulgur-Quinoa-Couscous Salad

Irish Cream Bundt Cake

Wicked Wienies

We had a really good time sharing all of the fabulous potluck food. Maintainers seem to be either good cooks themselves or married to one ☺ so we can always count on having great food at the potluck! There was more time to sit around over lunch and chat, share stories, and enjoy the company of folks who love the outdoors, the AT, and volunteer their time to keep the trail in great shape (see Ranger Ted's 'thank you' at the top of the post).

 

 



After the food and social part of the potluck, we spent the next 1-1/2 hours or so on the 'planning' part of our potluck meeting, getting ready for the next busy year of maintaining on the AT.  Planning portion of the potluck is at this link:

 

Maintainer Potluck (Planning) - Jan. 19, 2013

 

 

 

(All photos: Merlot)

Maintainer Potluck (Planning) - Jan. 19, 2013

 

 

After the food and social part of our maintainer potluck (Maintainer Potluck (Food & Social) - Jan. 19, 2013), Trail Supervisor Lori went over the list from last year's potluck of things to work on in 2012. It was satisfying to see a lot of those items get marked off the list as 'accomplished'. Some items happened, but in a different way than originally planned; for instance, the maintainer weekend became a maintainer/volunteer picnic at the Humpback Picnic area in September. Some of the items are a work-in-progress and will get carried forward, others like the grant for a GPS camera will get worked on from a different angle. Lori started a new list for 2013 (no picture) so we can continue to track what we are working on and the progress on those items.

 

Over the last two years, Lori has focused on: getting volunteers in general out on work trips, taking steps to be more certain of providing new volunteers with a good first work trip experience, and providing quality work trips that will keep all volunteers coming back on future work trips. Turnout on the 3rd Saturday of the month work trips has gone up and stayed up, with a number of first-timers returning after their initial trip, so this has been a successful effort! For the next year (at least), the focus will be on the 'Section Maintainers', those volunteers who take on the responsibility of doing the routine maintenance work and watching over a specific section of AT. This is the individual attention and "TLC" needed section by section to keep the AT in great shape and to keep Lori informed of the status, issues, and potential projects for work trips on each section.

 

There are trail sections that are now vacant and more will be coming vacant over the next year. The goal is to obtain, train, and retain new section maintainers and provide support for those section maintainers who are not so 'new'. To help with this process, a list of section maintainer responsibilities (*based on ATC standards and guidelines) was put together so each section maintainer knows what they are getting into when they take on a section and everyone has guidelines to follow and assist them in maintaining the sections. A shorter 'checklist', summarizing these normal maintaining activities, was put together for ease of use/reference and this also includes areas/issues on the trail for assessment and monitoring. 

 

Communication is also something we are going to work on:

• communication from the trail maintenance supervisor with section maintainers giving them info on assessments on their trail sections, work scheduled on their section, etc. and feedback on the routine maintenance on the section(s)
• section maintainers are going to work on keeping the trail maintenance supervisor up-to-date on issues they perceive as needing attention on their section so an assessment can be done ('fresh eyes' on the problem) and situations where they may need assistance and/or training on aspects of trail maintenance they are encountering on their section, as well as the routine maintenance that has been done to assist with scheduling work trip crews

 

Overall, it was a productive meeting with lots of thoughtful, serious discussion and comments. The section maintainer responsibilities and checklist documents were issued for reference and use, however they are considered in 'draft' format for the purpose of being open to comments and suggestions. Everybody who attended the meeting has the goal of a beautiful, well-maintained section of Appalachian Trail and these two documents should enhance the Section Maintainer Group's ability to fulfill their responsibilities as maintainers of a small piece of the 2,000+ mile AT, one of the greatest volunteer effort success stories ever (For further thoughts on this, see:  Appalachian Trail: Roof of the East Coast )

 

The checklist (draft) as presented at the meeting is reproduced below so you can see what was discussed and also so the casual visitor to the RtoR blog or person considering volunteering can see what it takes and how maintainers keep the AT a good experience for all those who hike its many miles .... especially those very 'near and dear' 19.1 miles between Rockfish Gap and Reeds Gap.  For an official, up-to-date maintaining club copy of this document, please contact the Trail Supervisor.

 

Trail Maintenance and Assessment Checklist

 

A. ACTIVITIES NORMALLY PERFORMED BY SECTION MAINTAINER

1. Trail Obstructions (remove limbs and loose rocks, etc., if feasible). Important: When reporting blowdowns, please note size (diameter) and type of tree, exact location, can it be stepped over, have hikers been walking around it already?
2. Weeds (cut down as required)
3. Brush (cut back as required, cut woody and annual growth on uphill side of trail i.e. 'angle of repose', consider leaving annual growth on downhill side of trail to encourage walking to the inside of the trail tread).
4. Water Bars and Other Erosion Control Features (clean as required)
5. Clean leaf and other debris off of rock step features
6. Sidehill (report areas where rehab is needed or rehab if trained/experienced on sidehilling)
7. Close off short cuts on switchbacks and abandoned trail sections
8. Blazes (remove tree branches as necessary to maintain clear view of blazes)
9. Springs (clear and scoop out space large enough to fill water bottle)
10. Litter (remove pamphlets, solicitations, food and litter from trailheads, trail and shelter areas)
11. Camping Areas (remove litter and bootleg fire rings)
12. Shelter Area (remove litter, wasp nests, and bootleg fire rings, sweep out, fill lime in privy, etc.)

 

B. ASSESSMENT POINTS AND OTHER MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES

1. Safety problems such as trees ready to fall, particularly in shelter area.
2. Blazes, markers & posts, signs & related support posts (appropriate frequency, position, readable, accuracy, conditions)
3. Spring or other water source (how reliable, usable condition, signage need replacing)
4. Treadway Stability (Erosion Control) (drainage dips, waterbars, check dams and drainage ditches adequate in number and in good condition)(cupping of trail less than 3 inches)(outward slope of 5%)
5. Treadway Dryness (Drainage)(does treadway have wet areas?)
6. Treadway Width (18-24 inches)
7. Trailheads (trail signs at parking areas, kiosks, litter, evidence of parking problems or illegal activity)
8. Litter at trail heads, along trail and at shelters indicating large groups.
9. Evidence of Unauthorized Usage (mountain bikes, horses, ATV's, structures, other)
10. Evidence of Switchbacks being cut
11. Evidence of Possible Illegal Trails
12. Tent Sites (is it a planned site or bootleg, fire rings, erosion problems )
13. Shelter - general (evidence of leaks, missing shingles, repairs needed, paint, or evidence of unauthorized use, picnic table in good condition, is fire pit full?)
14. Shelter - privy (evidence of leaks, repairs needed, paint, fullness of pit)

 

IMPORTANT: A section maintainer should not attempt any work which the section maintainer is not comfortable doing, he is not certified to do, is contrary to agency regulation, for which he does not have the proper PPE, or which may present a problem with safety.
 

The first blazes on the trail at Rockfish Gap

(Photo: Merlot.)

 

 

* Appalachian Trail Design, Construction and Maintenance (Second Edition) by William Birchard, Jr., and Robert Proudman.

* Appalachian Trail Fieldbook (Maintenance and Rehabilitation Guidelines for Volunteers)(Second Edition) The Appalachian Trail Conference