I wanted to take a few minutes to recap and thank everyone who came out to work on the Head Tide Trail on Saturday and also more generally, everyone who joined us during work weekend;
On the trail, we had a great team of young, very young, and enthusiastic folks who made the work easier and fun.
Saturday we finished the regular trail maintenance as far as Head Tide cut, including trimming of small brush and overgrowth.
A large dead, standing White Pine was removed from the ROW close to Trout Brook and used to cut tree biscuits for filling a boggy area just ahead of midcoast's access road. Ultimately, the reason for the boggy area is that the access road was built as a fill over the ROW and doesn't have any culverts for the ditches, so the uphill side fills with water. We can consider adding culverts here to offset this problem. This section of the RoW was completely impassible on foot for several years now, and is now passable on foot for the first time in years.
After lunch, we returned and brought the two remaining bridge frames into their final locations. The bridges will be set in their final position and decked later this week.
Lastly, the remaining unsafe bridge, which crossed the washout adjacent to Fred's Rock was removed and the trail was rerouted to go over the tail of the culvert for Rt. 218.
I'm looking forward to carrying on some additional work to get stairs in at the Head Tide Road end, but Sunday's unpleasant weather meant that work will wait for a later date.
Thanks to all who supported this effort: Jason & Eben, Josh, Ian & Toren, Phillip, Pete, Tucker, Sven & Bowen, Johnny and Artie. Of particular note here is that nearly half of the crew is too young to hold a driver's license. That was a great thing to see and I'm glad we can accomodate that.
Take care,
Steve