West Ridge Trail, October 5th

From newenglandtrailconditions.com for the West Ridge Trail on October 5th:

Over 4 trips beyond such routine jobs as cleaning drains and chopping blowdowns, Cardigan Highlanders Volunteer Trail Crew has built fixtures to mitigate erosion problems 0.6 miles above the trailhead. Those washouts result from snowshoers packing down a monorail of ice that dammed a seasonal stream that crosses the trail; the resulting flood undermined a waterbar and blew out two earthen drainage dips. All three fixture are now replaced with rock waterbars of stones up to ~400 lbs. set about 3/4 their height across the trail, with deeper ditches uphill to carry water past the rocks. They have 5, 4, and 4 rocks plus rock scree as needed on either end. There are also 6 new rock steps on steeper slopes as needed. The work took 41 hours. No erosion mitigation is absolutely certain against forces of nature, but we believe these will work much better than what we had there since 1985. 

 –      The season has six weeks to go, and we are busy.  Please write us at [email protected] if interested, or even just curious.  We’ll write back.