It’s a peaceful morning in Pisgah National Forest. Along the Cat Gap Loop, the scent of last night’s campfire lingers in the air, and songbirds chatter overhead.
In the lush earth below, freshly-blooming wildflowers are abundant: White trillium, bloodroot, Jack-in-the-pulpit, lady’s slipper.
But soon the birdsong is drowned out by a different sound: the roar of chainsaws and the clanging of metal tools.
“Well, they're using what's called a pick mattock here to move this rock,” Brevard resident Skip Sheldon says, pointing out his fellow volunteers one-by-one.
“What he's got is called a hazel hoe, and it's used for moving dirt and rocks, digging with. … And well, Linda isn’t here yet, but she’s going to bring what's called a rockbar that we’ll use to straighten this rock up with.”
At 81 years old, Sheldon has been doing trail work for close to four decades.
“I’m the old guy of the crew,” he says with a laugh.
Sheldon is one of more than one hundred volunteers who fanned out across the forest’s John Rock area to maintain trails as part of the Carolina Mountain Club’s most recent Quarterly Crew Day. The all-volunteer club celebrated its 100th birthday last year.
Its members maintain more than 440 miles of trail throughout Western North Carolina, including parts of the Appalachian and Mountain-to-Sea trails.
To the average hiker, trails are something that’s just … there.
But it takes a small army of volunteers from a variety of groups to maintain them. And everything from the width of the trail to the direction of its slope to the placement of rocks makes a difference.
Kristen Sikorsky is a deputy recreation program manager for one of the three districts in the U.S. Forest Service that includes Pisgah National Forest.
“We couldn't accomplish our agency’s goal to care for the land and serve people without volunteers and partners,” she says.
Sikorsky’s district covers about 165,000 acres and employs 25 permanent staff members as well as some seasonal workers. But many of those employees work inside buildings, not outdoors.
The annual Forest Service budget for trail work in the district is only $6,000, Sikorsky says, so volunteer efforts play a vital role.
“I consider them the lifeblood of the Pisgah Ranger District,” Sikorsky says. “They contribute hundreds of thousands worth of volunteer hours, equating to millions of dollars’ worth of work on our district every year. It's a really unbelievable amount of value that they bring to us.”
Carolina Mountain Club crews maintain certain sections of trail every week. But there are also Quarterly Crew Days, which are a great opportunity for first-timers to don a hardhat and learn the difference between a pick mattock and a hazel hoe.
David Huff, who handles communications for the group, says the club is open to people of all abilities.
“Any skill level, any activity level, and we're 100% volunteer, and everybody is welcome,” he says.
‘It’s kind of like problem solving’
On this particular Saturday in April, one volunteer group works to replace a footbridge constructed from forest materials that had become a safety hazard.
Among the volunteers is 11-year-old Boy Scout Dominic Zandona, who is working as part of a trail crew for the first time.
“We're building a bridge because the old one is too small,” Dominic says. “So it's harder for people to get over.”
The bridge site is a whirlwind of activity. A few of the older Scouts are pulling bark off some downed trees in order to replace the base of the timber crossing over a small stream. Others are hauling gravel to fill the foundations on either side of the creek. Several engineers among the crew’s longtime members are directing the flow of traffic.
Higher up the mountain, retired engineer Paul Curtin and other volunteers spent the morning diverting a stream that had been flooding the trail.
The team had to clear out overgrowth, break up dams, haul away debris and flip over a large rock. Curtin says that while the solution wasn’t obvious, the challenge is part of the fun.
“You know, whenever we come out on a work day, we never know exactly how we're gonna fix it,” Curtin says. “So it's kind of like problem solving. You come out and take a look at it — ‘what could we do?’ And you throw some ideas around, and then you go, ‘Oh, let’s try this.’”
To most people, rocks along the side of the trail might not look like anything special. But often, each rock has a hidden purpose that’s been carefully thought out by a trail crew. Volunteer Bob Fuller, who is also an engineer, explains.
Rocks “are like shingles,” he says. “One rock overlaps each one, so the water runs off of one rock onto the next rock, just like it would on your roof, coming down over shingles. And then where it goes across the trail, where it hits the embankment, we have rocks there to armor it.”
From damaged areas to illegal trails
Among the new volunteers on the trail is Tracy Mensah, who’s digging up roots that have been exposed by erosion. A professor at Western Carolina University, Mensah says the experience has given her a greater appreciation for the work that goes into preserving access to the outdoors.
“Some of the roots are so thick that you need to, like, hack through them. So that’s what I’m doing. … That’s my exercise for the week!” she says.
Another volunteer, Rich Evans, notes that the consequences for trails are serious if they aren’t taken care of on a regular basis.
“Usually, a trail will go back to the forest in about three years if it’s unattended,” he says. “In other words, it won’t be a trail.”
Asked about the process of deciding which trails need to be maintained and when, Sikorsky says she “lovingly” calls it “organized chaos.” She says volunteers do everything from identify problem areas to help combat the growing problem of illegal trails.
“Obviously, it can be very difficult to manage all of our work that our partners are doing and dedicate their resources to the right places at the right time,” Sikorsky says. “They are out recreating. They're able to see the damage sometimes before we even can. And they make recommendations to us based upon what needs fixed at any given time.”
Huff, the club’s communications manager, says doing trail work is not only an opportunity to meet great people and give back to the outdoors — it also has health benefits.
“All the research says that being out in nature is good for us, right?” he says. “And it is, right? You feel a real rush and your stress level goes down. I mean, listen to the birds right now, right? It's beautiful."
"And so, at the end of the day, you feel like you've accomplished something," he adds.
The Carolina Mountain Club’s next Quarterly Crew Day is August 17, in the John Rock area of Pisgah National Forest. You can find out more at their website, CMC100th.org.
