Posts by cardiganhighlanders

A clean drain is a happy drain! The trailwork manuals say that drains should be cleared of leaves before snowfall. Dry leaves do rake MUCH easier now than do soaked ones in May. Cleaning drains now means they can handle downpours and snowmelt right into next summer. Some crews heed this advice, some do not.…

This foliage season is easily the most spectacular one hereabouts in many years. After a drought, there was enough rain in September to let the hardwoods really blaze with color against the constant of dark green spruce, fir and hemlock. Swamp maples in bright scarlet, sugar maples in yellow or orange, beeches in a lighter…

One major focus of 2022’s work was to remove and replace old rotting broken woodwork on West Ridge Trail, the main tourist trail up Mt Cardigan from the west. It climbs moderate grades on deep mineral soil, varied by steeper bands of ledge, until it encounters bedrock ledges just above Cliff’s Bridge which it follows to…

We were a crew of two, so we decided to gain time by working from the bottom up instead of the top down. We added a largish pin rock to an older waterbar. At the upper side of the powerline cut, we added a rock step to help hikers climb a short but steep slope. The new…

The crew gathered at the Winslow trailhead at 0900, and what with trading news, greeting friends, waivers and tools etc we started the hike uphill at almost 1000. The day was cool and breezy, very pleasant, and we enjoyed taking our time up to the flight of 10 rock stairs we built last year. Just…

Back in April 1986, by request of the ranger-in-charge, we moved West Ridge Trail from its old route across a bog to a parallel route just to the north that crosses gently sloping ground, which made it possible to drain that route. We built the first bridge across a small brook, two stringers of local…

The format of 13-14 Aug worked well enough that we tried it again: signups determine which day we turn out, so the crew replied all to choose what works best. Because the drains are cleaned, the brush trimmed, and the trails blazed (see 8/4/22 Trailwork Update), we can move on to level 2 building tasks.…

Let’s see here… We had no interest in travelling to Monadnock Trails Week 7/22-26, due at least in part to temps in the 90s F. I therefore blazed West Ridge Trail in ORANGE below the cascade on 7/23. I rode the chairlift up Mt Sunapee on 7/24, and scouted Lake Solitude Trail for work for…