This weekend was pretty exhausting/exhilirating at Moore Creek Park, where I have been volunteering occasionally for about 4 years now. On Saturday we installed a bench in memory of one of the volunteers who gave a lot of time planning and helping create the trails up there. The bench was made by an Explorer Scout, who will make 3 more for the park with his troop, and we installed it at one of her favorite view spots, one she had located, and then put a sign up directing people off the main trail to Vista Andrea. A bit of work getting the holes for the bench and post two feet deep, but we managed, then filled them with cement. My saw slipped while I was cutting a small branch, and tore into the my index knuckle on the other hand, resulting in a lot of thin blood, since I am taking baby aspirin, although the damage was actually pretty slight. I regretted not having my meter in my pack at that moment, to test my blood sugar, but after bandaging up the finger I was able to work quite a bit more. We then joined the other trail workers, widening trail, cutting a tree, and fixing a damaged set of rock stairs. Today we went up and worked on the narrowest section of trail. I found that my endurance walking the exact same trails as yesterday had improved quite a bit. Last time I was there we opened the park to the public for the first time and so the most noticeable thing this weekend was how different it is with the park opened. Yesterday we directed a couple with an eight-month old baby to the new vista point, and encountered a trail runner, and several other hikers. Today we had to scurry off the narrow section of trail we were working on so that two horses could come by. A marathoner in training said, Bless you, trail angels as she passed today. As I was leaving today, a bicyclist was arriving to ride the trails. The people we talked to agreed with us that the park is extremely beautiful, one of the reasons I have gone back there so often. Today I started out by helping to pull over a tree we had cut yesterday, a tree which had fallen but was still standing but threatening to collapse on the trail. The come-along we took up there was frozen, so we tied a long rope near the bottom of the tree, which was maybe 40-50 feet high and 3 of us pulled it away from the trail down the hill until it fell, far enough down the hill so that we only had to cut off the little bit that was still on the trail and a bit more for looks. Then we joined the other group on the narrow section where we were busting rocks to widen the trail, and removing dirt in buckets to where it would not fall into the stream. All in all 14 volunteers on Saturday and 8 today got a heck of a lot of good work done!
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 04:37:22 +0000
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