Cleaning Up the Newbury Trail

On Sunday July 28th, 2024, Cardigan Highlanders Aurel, Ben, Bob, Chris, Josh, and Scott met at the Caboose in Newbury Harbor at 8 AM for a day of work on Newbury Trail. The job of the day was to clean and where necessary re-dig the drains, remove blow downs, and do some brushing especially on the ridge between the outlook and junction of Newbury Trail with Solitude Trail.

We set boots on the trail at about 8:30 AM and were immediately surprised to find the first brook crossing completely dry. Scott and I remarked that in all the years we’ve been tending this trail this was the first time we’d seen this brook devoid of water.

We soon found ourselves hard at work cleaning drains and dealing with blow downs and trees leaning into the trail. We also encountered many large step-over downed trees too large for our hand saws to handle. We have plans to revisit the trail with a chain saw to address those.

When all was said and done, we cleaned 36 drains, cut down 4 trees leaning into and obstructing the trail, removed one Widow Maker about eight feet above the tail, removed 8 large step over logs laying in the trail by using either trail saws or axe, and did some much needed brushing along the three quarter mile ridge between the outlook and the trails’ junction with the Solitude trail. We also added barricade to five spots where hikers were going off trail, cutting corners, or undermining rock steps by not using the steps and walking beside them helping to exacerbate erosion and increasing the chance for demise of these rock fixtures.

It was a very productive day and by 4:30 PM we were back at our vehicles in Newbury Harbor. We felt like we had done a lot of good work on the trail and aside from the dozen or so step-over logs we left the tail in very good condition.

Bob Humphrey
CHVTC Team Leader