Maintenance News

MST Coordinator wanted!
The CMC position of Coordinator of the Section Maintainer System for the Mountains to the Sea Trail is open. This prestigious duty for the CMC includes supervising the 5 big sections of the MST (160 miles) which includes 100 volunteer section maintainers. The job is about 1/3rd recruiting of maintainers, 1/3rd communicating with all of the various federal and state agencies and 1/3rd management including recording and reporting all of the hours worked to various places. If interested, please contact Don Walton

The CMC has a Alternate MST section open. It goes from Cat Gap to Neil Gap 3.0 miles. The trail is in good shape and are waiting to start a love affair with an affectionate maintainer! If interested please contact Jim Tanquary, jdtanquary@juno.com or Don Walton at donwalton@bellsouth.net

TRAIL REPORT Monday Oct. 24

None. For those of you that did not have the opportunity to venture up the mountains today
you should know that fall is over and we have gone from 80 degree temps to freezing. Jorge
and I met at Bull Gap and we only needed to get out of the car to realize that our pay did
not warrant putting up with the wind chill up there.

Barth

CMC EASTERN TRAIL REPORT Monday Oct. 17

Check: AT _ MTS X Other _
SECTION ID: Black Mountain Camp Ground to Higgins Bald
                           Hours
                   Travel   Work   Total
Brooker, Barth       1        7      8
Poe, Bob                1        7      8
Munoz, Jorge          1        7      8

Item 556. The waist high tree blocking the trail was removed. We trimmed the branches on the first
tree further up the trail: however we ran out of time and did not get to the two trees above that
one. As I recall a hand saw and loppers can be used on them coming down from Commissary Ridge.

The climb up was good exercise and the day was beautiful. We survived the first day of bear hunting unscathed.

Don,I would think we can remove the item from the data base.

The trail below Higgins Bald could use some lopping and blazing. Not a whole lot can be done in the way
of tread work.

Barth Brooker
barthb@bellsouth.net

Forgot to request removal of item 287 from the to do list.
Scouting Higgins Bald to Black Mountain Camp Ground. Barth

A large 7 out with an "almost" credit to Bob Poe who turned up with a heel injury. While we missed Bob and Bill (Mr. Carr to some of us), we had one of our good "sleepers" out with us once again to enjoy what turned out to be beautiful, clear, fall day up near Wolf Laurel. Thanks for joining us Bruce. Some of our crew think Bruce is a Wednesday Trail Crew closet volunteer but we will take him any day for sure. Good to have you out. With our Crew short by two, we had 7 out today.
Got lots of back logged work done on this section...no pun intended. We worked Street Gap North-bound to the bottom of the steep and dangerous hill before the campsite. This is one mile in and the crew cut, carried and installed 21 silt bars, one large drainage ditch and two large (very large) water bars on the steep hill. On our way out, we stopped and dug 103 feet of sidehilling. One eighth mile in from Street Gap we installed two large (very large) water bars and drainage ditches. This work may BEGIN to reclaim some of the trail and help with the water erosion...before it gets too bad.
On a more somber note, our very own Mr. Roberts hops into his "creative" bag of sound (and fury) magic for another Hollywood flick. This one with Oliver Stone presiding over the work in New York City. We won't have his presence until sometime in February of '06. We'll save him a fried trout from the US Park Service fish fry this month and, as always, keep a place for him in the big truck. Lots of work today. Out at 1:25 PM. Official Report follows. Thanks guys...see all of you on the 21st of October. Mr. Bair and Mr. Munoz will be in charge for the 19. JS

In Keeping with John's tradition, I will give you an informal report on our work today. I'm sure it will not be as entertaining as John's, but it will have to do till next week.

We met a few minutes later than usual and I think this scared some folks away. Still, we had three strong folks, Charlie, Jorge and I to enjoy a beautuiful day. We met at Craven Gap and scouted out a Locust tree that was right for a set of steps on the northbound access trail from the parking area. There are plenty to choose from so we used several of them. Jorge and I sawed and carried, and Charlie dug and set steps. When we had plenty (10) nice logs for Charlie, Jorge and I went over the knoll and cut 5 more logs for the downhill side. We had them all in place by about 10:30 so we decided to hike south to a crater that Jorge knew about from an old blowdown. He said it was about a 10 minute hike. About 45 minutes later we arrived at the site. Jorge must have been a faster hiker a year or so ago. We had a nice lunch among the beautiful asters and the poison ivy and then we did an artful job of filling in the hole left by the rootball. With the root ball and a few nice steps to enter and leave the area, it is a very pleasant spot. All it needs is a little bench between the aster patch and the rootball and it would be an ideal lunch/rest spot. We were back to the vehicles by 1:15 and we missed John's cooler on this nearly 80 degree day. Looking forward to having our leader back next week. I hope to see you all at the fish fry on Friday. D