American Hiking Society’s National Trails Day® (NTD) is a celebration of America’s magnificent Trail System, occurring annually on the first Saturday in June. NTD features a series of outdoor activities, designed to promote and celebrate the importance of trails in the United States. Individuals, clubs and organizations from around the country host National Trails Day® events to share their love of trails with friends, family, and their communities. NTD introduces thousands of Americans to a wide array of trail activities: hiking, biking, paddling, horseback riding, trail running, and bird watching and more. For public and private land managers alike, National Trails Day® is a great time to showcase beautiful landscapes and special or threatened locales as thousands of people will be outside looking to participate in NTD events.
OK we are back at Sam’s Point Preserve for a NTD event to continue the work of building water-bars along a fire-break. We started this task back on 5/12/16. Other volunteers have been here since then and have built water-mitigation controls and water-bars along the way. The fire break was made as an access road or a location where a back fire could be started if needed. Fortunately the fire earlier this year never reached this far. The fire break now needed water-bars in order to stop erosion from even getting started. This trip will be a little different than last time because this time we will have to carry all the tools we will be needing to accomplish our task. We needed to carry the tools since the ATV used last time wouldn’t be able to navigate the steep and rugged fire-break path. In addition to 6 members of the LDTC, Drew and his crew were able to recruit an additional 9 volunteers for todays project. We would break up into 3 crews with 2 LDTC members part of each crew.
We all met in the Sam’s Point Preserve visitors center parking lot, there Drew gave the new volunteers hard hats, gloves, a quick safety lesson and a few words of encouragement. Since we would be working in an area that was past where we had work before the todays plan was to take all the cars to the top of the mountain as close to the worksite as possible, leave most of the cars and tools there, then drive a few vehicles down to the bottom of the mountain and park near where we would be when finished. The plan was after we worked our way down the mountain we would pack up the tools and all the people and drive back to parking area #1. Then it was back to the Sam’s Point Preserve visitors center and Drew and Emily house for a LDTC sponsored BBQ.
I didn’t get the names of all the great volunteers but I do want to say, Thank You for volunteering your time and energy, your efforts certainly made National Trails Day 2016 a rewarding experience.
