I joined crew leader Marla and a group of volunteers for a day of trail building at Beaver Lake Preserve today. The job I had today was pretty straightforward-finishing a roughed out trail with several other volunteers. That involved double-digging down to the light brown mineral soil with a grub hoe and shovel, removing roots and rocks, and tamping it down with the McLeod. There were more roots than I expected but fortunately no large rocks to deal with today.
Since we had such a large group there three or four different types of work going in today. Some people were spreading gravel (which seemed unusual for a WTA work party) and others were transplanting ferns to beautify barren areas near the trail. Others worked on felling a tree and taking the stump out of the ground, which literally took them all day. There were plenty of opportunities to try different jobs throughout the day, though I chose to stick with finishing the new trail.
The new trails we worked on do not appear to be open to the public yet, but there are other trails in the area and I saw several groups, mostly trail runners, out enjoying them on a beautiful Saturday. The other trails appear to be in pretty good shape for the most part.
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