Trail Maintenance - Garenflo Gap to Bluff Mountain, Appalachian Trail

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
12/8/2024	7.4 miles	6 hours 42 minutes	1,917'	1.4 mph	771.4 miles

Parking: 

• Garenflo Gap

Map:

• n/a

Directions:

• n/a

We went out to do trail maintenance on our section for the second time this week. We were joined by our friend Marie, who was looking to get out for a hike today. We put her to work. After going out before, we knew there were two blowdowns we wanted to get cleaned up before the sawyers came to work on our section. Cleaning them up ahead of time will make it easier for them. A lot of the snow we had on our last trip had melted, revealing more branches down which we removed from the trail. Having a lot of orthopedic issues has made me want to make our section as terrain friendly as possible - so no one falls and injures themselves. So, sticks and loose rocks get removed. About a mile from the summit, we hit snow. It was kind of slippery because of melting and refreezing. We got to our blowdown and stopped to eat lunch before getting to work. Surprisingly, we saw someone come up the trail with a dog. We started talking and found out that he's a new CMC member and has recently joined the Friday trail crew. We recruited him to help too :) He joined us for around 1/2 hour, helping us lop away and remove branches from the blowdown. Nice! Krumm and his dog played while we worked. When we were mostly done, he hiked on. Glen went on to the next blowdown, while Marie and I did a little more cleaning up of the first one. On our hike down, the new CMC member ran into us again. We recruited him for 2 more minutes to help remove a tree that has fallen across the trail. Score! At the trailhead, there was a bunch of trash, which Krumm carried out for us. And poop. Two piles. It looked like human poop. Just ew.

Krumm trying to help us roll a tree off the trail.

Krumm checking out a hole. 
The tree had some puffballs on it!