This event was planned in conjunction with Ryan from the Washington Trails Association. WTA is an advocacy group that does mostly trail maintenance so they are constantly organizing work parties with volunteers to do trail work. For this particular weekend, being the first time with WTA, I decided to do a combination hike and work thing to make it more interesting for the group. Since WTA volunteer where working the whole weekend, they had a campground reserved for all. On Saturday, after meeting everybody we drove to the campground. Once there, we picked our spots to set up camp and leave our gear. Shortly after lunch, we went out on a hike towards Hardy Ridge. The first portion of this hike was on a forest road. Half way up we found the connector trail that WTA was working on and where we were going to be working on Sunday. From that point, we continued going up until we found the fork to the Hardy Ridge trail. Unfortunately the weather turned on us so the whole time during our hike we were covered in clouds and fog. The views you are supposed to get from the ridge were no there. Still it was a very nice hike and once we got back to camp, we met with the rest of the group. They had already started a fire and WTA was providing Hot Dogs and trimmings. We spent a long time talking and meeting the rest of the crew and then Ryan organized a couple of games for the group. On Sunday, we woke up early in the morning and had a good breakfast before Henry showed up and started his safety talk before hitting the trail. Once we got our green hardhats, we divided in groups and drove to the trail head, grabbed the tools and went to work. There we formed 3 or 4 teams and each was taking on a specific task. One group was farther ahead clearing the path and cutting some smaller trees. A couple of groups behind were removing a couple of tree stumps in the middle of the trail while others where just cleaning and I was working with Henry hand cutting to large trees that were in the middle. It was really an experience to see that there was almost nothing when we got there in the morning and in the afternoon there was already a clear trail for just a couple hundred yards. Obviously the work is not done, Ryan was commenting that the trail we were working on has to be multiuse (bike, hike or horseback ride) so they will probably be working all summer to get it done and we might post more of these working trips. For me, besides experiencing the change in the trail from morning to afternoon, working on the connector trail made me appreciate more all the trails we use every weekend that we take for granted. Making a new trail of just maintaining it so it’s usable requires a lot of work that often goes unnoticed.
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