Well, not really a chain gang....but we worked like one. This is about 1/4 of the members of the Fairfield Glade Hiking Club that participated in trail maintenance at Black Mountain today.Black Mountain is only about 10 miles from our house. At 2828 feet, it is one of the taller peaks on the plateau. On a clear day you can see for many miles in all directions. When we were there last spring we could see the Smoky Mountains 75 miles away. At over 6,600 feet, the Smokys towered above our little peaks on the plateau.
Our club is the official guardian of the Black Mountain portion of the Cumberland Trail which traverses Tennessee. Friday is our normal hiking day, but today instead of hiking we worked on the trail.
It sounds a lot more glamorous than it is. Trail building and maintenance always sounded like an exciting outdoorsy type of thing to do. I even considered signing up for a week of this manual labor on the Appalachian Trail. I am sure glad that I didn't! Two hours of using a fire rake, or a McCloud (all-purpose chopper-raker kind of thing) and I was glad it started raining.
The goal is to create or maintain a corridor 4 feet wide by 8 feet high. We did that! In the process we pruned limbs, chopped out roots, and dug out some rocks on the trail. In real trail work you also dig down through any topsoil to the "mineral soil" which is a lighter color. Plants do not grow as easily in the mineral soil so the trail is less likely to grow over as soon. Our mostly retired hiking club didn't have enough muscle power to dig down to the mineral soil. But we all did our jobs of raking, chopping, pruning, etc. and the trail looked like a boulevard. It wasn't much, but every little bit helps. By the way, that is Nancy in the middle of the picture with her round white name badge.
