Third Day

My day was slightly different than the last two. I had a cycling race at Newfound Lake and the bus left at 1:00 this afternoon. By the time I hiked up I only had about two hours to work before I needed to head down. The race went pretty well and Proctor seemed to succeed overall as boys C took first as a team for the season.

Prior to the race I spent time hiking between the bulkhead and balancing rock to see if there were alternative routes that looked more appealing than the rough existing route. I noticed a huge difference in the forest as I went along the trail and into other parts of the woods. The trees are considerably thiner and there is a lot more vegetation on the ground due to the increased sunlight. The landscape becomes rocky and the difficulty of the trail increases quite a bit as you get closer to balancing rock. My dog accompanied me again and he did not like some of the steeper trail sections; a good indicator of difficulty. Although I am not sure if these areas will be avoidable in the final trail layout, I will try to limit the pitch of the trail for hikers safety and environmental concerns.

One thing that I noticed while hiking in is that the existing trail that I use to get to the bulkhead is eroding. Although it is a great trail many of its steep pitches are long with no break. As the water goes down it picks up more speed and carries more of the soils downhill. This caught my eye and reminded me of some of the issues outlined in the DVD's that Josh lent me. The DVD's demonstrate different methods to limit the environmental impact of a woodland trail. The most direct route for constructing a trail is not best for the environment. Seeing the problems with an existing trail was helpful. I kept most of these issues in mind when building the first part of the new trail and tried to use natural land contours to help with runoff. Progress has been good so far and I look forward to finishing the trail next week.