Trail Maintenance on the Long Trail, Belvidere Mountain Section

On Friday morning of last week, Dave and I hustled out of the house to hit Belvidere Mountain to do trail maintenance on the Long Trail, before driving 3 hours to New Hampshire for a weekend spent with family.

We had hiked Belvidere the previous weekend and at one point in the hike we had to crawl under a huge birch tree blocking the trail. We talked about thru-hikers (people who hike the 274-mile long trail from one end to the other, also known as end-to-enders) and how they would have to unbuckle their packs, set the heavy load on top of the tree, and crawl underneath before putting their packs back on. Soon hikers would get tired of going under and start hiking around the tree, breaking a new trail, which might create erosion problems. Dave decided he wanted to come back to the birch tree with his chainsaw. He asked the Director of the Green Moutain Club, Ben Rose, if it was okay to do some trail maintenance and got the go ahead. So Friday was the day to make it happen.

I carried the saw to get a better workout and to help Dave out--the extra weight on his bad ankle would not be a good thing. While trying to figure out a way to strap the saw on my pack, I came up with the idea of putting a board in my pack for extra stability to tie the saw against. Worked like a charm!

Doo, doo, doo. On we hike up and up to find our first tree. We passed the birch on the way up, deciding to cut it on our way down.

Cutting our first tree off of the trail.

Down we go to find more trees! Our first tree was as high as we decided to hike; we made it pretty close to the summit before heading back down.

The big old birch! Dave is starting his cut and my heart is pounding because it was a big tree!

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz goes the saw.

Now from underneath. Dave work from the top and the bottom of the tree, trying to figure out the best way to keep from pinching the saw with the weight of the tree. If he pinched the saw in the tree, we would have been screwed, unable to get the saw out of the tree.

Once he got through the tree, it sprang back up like a hinge. The weight of the roots, that were still attached to the ground, tugged the tree back into place, making it look like someone climbed up on a ladder to cut the tree in half.

Now for the rest of the tree so we can roll it off of the trail.

We got pretty wet during the hike. At one point, while we were hiking down, the clouds opened and dumped massive amounts of water on us. We decided that if it were raining that hard when we came upon the birch we would just have to step under the tree and keep hiking, not stopping to clear it for fear of slipping. We also wanted to keep the saw from getting soggy! But the rain cleared and we were free to cut.

We did it! The trail was open once again, ready for boot soles to pack it down.

Back at the car and ready for a shower.