WTA Volunteer Trail Work: Tiger Mountain Trail 2/19/2012

Me, in my protective hat.

Tiger Mountain Trail

Today, I took on the act of stewardship. I decided it was time  to give back to the trails I so often enjoy. Now I will admit I am not a fan of trail super highways which commonly give some these organizations a bad rap. But there are some great benefits to the work these groups do.

Today was an eye opening experience for me. It made me appreciate the work these groups do. It is amazing to see how abused some of the more popular trails are. These well-traveled trails would be eroded and abused pieces of landscape if it weren't for work by groups such as the Washington Trail Association. It felt great to give back to a cause that means so much for my personal enjoyment. Overall, I met some great people, I worked hard and I had fun!

Here is the synopsis of the trail work we performed as written by Claire Hanson our fearless leader:

It was a little chilly Sunday morning, but what better way to warm up than a mile hike in! This trail has seen a lot of WTA volunteers this winter, so we’ve been able to cover a lot of distance on this trail – and it has needed every bit of it.

Not everyone got to see all that great work, due to that still infamous section near the beginning of the trail. A big thanks to Jim, Walt (thanks x3 for the third day at this site!), Hollis, Allison, and Jordan for spending the day here, putting in another check step, locating addition MAJOR sources of water on the trail, and finding the most reasonable ways of diverting them. This will need more work, but they made huge strides here on Sunday.

Elly and Jack revived that curious single-log stringer – another fickle section. Then made the drains in the area actually start draining (what a wild idea!), before reinforcing the tread team up ahead. By the looks of this section, folks are going to be pretty grateful for the stringer option in the wet months ahead.

Another of Sunday's project sites has become just as infamous as that first one. The final day of repair on the worst switchback corner. What started as an eroded slip ‘n slide along some treacherous roots – now is one of the nicest corners out there. Nice work! Scott and Linda, both insisting on seeing this project through to the end, along with Marcus and Chris – all showed what some HEAVY lifting, some serious material moving, and a lot of patience can do for a seemingly hopeless section of trail.

Mike D and George offered some emergency rock carrying support to that project as well (crucial), before finishing up the first rerouted corner and joining the retread team ahead. And oh boy does that retread team deserve some credit. This trail gets lots of damage from such heavy use and all that water. Carole, Cheryl, Ed, Mike, and Sarah, spent the day doing a lot of important work on those reroutes up ahead (plus retreading all those stretches of trail in between, and beyond), giving them a real shot at holding up against all that wear and tear.

Richard, Gargi, and Anna helped it finally feel like a completed section by closing off the old trail. When quittin’ time came and it was inspection time.. well.. it was darn near impossible to even find the old trail to inspect. Great work guys.

Another awesome day on Tiger. It has been such fun this winter seeing so many improvements get put in place. Thanks everyone for such a great Sunday, you all got a ton of really impressive work done.

Claire