7/26: Check Marks on the Winslow Trail Job List
Today we again took advantage of cooler temps higher on the NW aspect of Mount Kearsarge, and under the canopy of summer leaves. We were two, TL Scott and TM Craig. We worked our way uphill, doing work needed from a new trail inventory of July 8, 2025.
These inventories list present and needed fixtures by type, # rocks or L of log, crew and year they built it as best we know. This one is for the lowest ~ 0.3 mile of trail, and has 33 items. For this stretch of trail, more than 80% of them are now built.
That is why this trail rates a Needs Condition Two: it is tended by Cardigan Highlanders, who build some more each year. Of course, other and earlier crews built things too, and the inventory names them by each item.
Each of our workdays is a news item on the website, and the public is free to scroll it. This Saturday July 26, we lugged tools uphill over work both recent and old, and came to job # 19: reset a 12' log waterbar that is still sound enough for several more years. See photo... >>>>>
After lunch and a short walk uphill, we reached job # 22, remove & replace a rotten old 5' log step. Well, as Uncle Ray said, "Everything around us is a resource." Just downhill were several sections of fir log sawn from a blowdown a year or two ago, and about 10" in diameter. While one dug out the old and deepened its trench, the other salvaged a 5'L section and rolled it uphill. A few minutes of fitting the trench to it, backfill and tamp the mineral soil above it, barricading beside it, another job done for the next several years. See photo... >>>>>
We carried on uphill to item # 30, a seasonal brook with a large cross-drain. Uphill are big jobs we did in 2022, 2023, and 2024, plus a few smaller ones. We agreed that since there are step stones beside the larger ones (likely by Trailwrights 1988), hikers can and do get by without unusual difficulty.
Our small team was harmonious all day, we talked, raised questions, offered opinions, decided together, then did. We know that all trailworkers, indeed all volunteers, really are on the same team.
Thanks to everyone on the crew, for all 40 years, and their supporters.
Craig Sanborn, CHVTC
Trailmaster
