Trail Maintenance, Appalachian Trail, Garenflo Gap to Bluff Mountain

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
3/2/2022	8.4 miles	7 hours	2,222'	1.6 mph	127.1

Parking: Garenflo Gap

Maps:

• FarOut app (Guthook)
• Appalachian Trail Conservancy North Carolina-Georgia Map

Directions:

• n/a

A warm spring day for trail maintenance for Wednesday fun day! Forecast was for a sunny 70 degrees in downtown Hot Springs. We hiked to the top of Bluff Mountain and worked going down. Today we focused on lopping rhododendrons, clearing 3 trees from the trail, cutting out roots in the trail, and removing sticks and branches from the trail. So much to do, but I feel like our "spring cleaning" is done after 4 trips. 

The next time we go out, we'll probably focus on a project, as opposed to just catching up. Our section has several streams. A couple of the streams have water that doesn't just cross the trail but runs down the trail. Water on the trail is a bad thing. We aren't experienced on how to handle this, but we'll do some research and ask questions to find out. There's another stream crossing that is awkward to cross, so we'll try to come up with some rock placements to make it easier for people. We only saw 3 backpackers today - section hikers.

Krummholz packed out some trash we found. We finished our hike 20 minutes after sunset. Oops! It's easy to lose track of time, as we always see just one more thing to fix, lol.

Trying to figure out what to do about water running down the trail at a stream crossing.