Trails Day 2020
Covid 19 has effected us all in one way or another. Being locked down and staying at home can be extremely difficult for those of us who are incredibly active and devoted to living in the outdoors. National Trails Day is a huge event around the country, here in CT, and for the RMF, a day to give back to restoring the overused trails on our property.
Typically on National Trails Day, I lead a group to do annual maintenance on the earthen dam that we own on the edge of Hart Pond. The state actually calls it Moose Pond and is CT dam # 13106. The annual work involves inspecting and cleaning the spillway to reduce any water level rise, which puts additional pressure on the old earthen dam, and we also have to trim all the vegetation on all sides of the dam to prevent weakening of the earthen structure. A second group of volunteers walk the trails of the Ragged Mountain property removing, trash, downed trees, and fire rings. With enough people, all this work is easily accomplished in a day, many times with enough time left over to get a little climbing in too.
This years event had to be cancelled. In fact all of the scheduled Connecticut Forest and Parks, (CFPA) trails day events were forced to cancel due to the pandemic, and the Governors stay at home orders. Being older, I followed the state’s guidelines and started staying home mid March. But now it’s June, the big event has been cancelled and I’m dying to get out. So keeping with physical distancing guidelines, I decided to do the work myself and have a private kind of trails day event.
Moose Pond Dam
The tools were ready to go. With time on my hands,I had tuned up and re-threaded the gas powered string trimmer, sharpened the loppers, and located all the shovels, rakes, buckets, gloves, and face shields that we use every year. I started on the day before, dropping off and stashing the tools, and making the first of many carries to the dam. After, I hiked up the trail, along the base of the cliff, up the north gully, across the top of the cliff, then back down the south stairs to the kiosk. There was not much trash, just some typical climbers trash of tape, and power bar wrappers. I won’t call the cigarette buts climbers trash, but there were some. A few beer cans and some glass. On the top of the cliff was a fire ring. I gathered up the easy loose trash, and made plans to bring a bucket and rake for the glass, more serious trash, and to remove the fire pit.
Saturday, or the actual National Trails Day was going to be a hot one. I decided to get there early and beat the heat. Cleaning the spillway on a nice warm day is always fun. Getting into the water, moving rocks, and vegetation. Cutting the rest of the dam is a project. Last year we had three string trimmers going along with rakers to complete the dams haircut. Being alone was a workout. I used loppers to trim the heavy stuff so as not to damage the trimmer. I wore a face shield and was fully covered except from the edge of my gloves, to the end of my T-shirt. Guess where I got the poison ivy. I worked the trimmer hard until it was out of gas and string, then raked the area clean. It was starting to get hot and I decided to finish with the hike around the cliff. Armed with my bucket, gloves, mask, and rake I moved out. At the cliff I met a few RMF climbers and told them what was going on. I moved up over the top and removed the fire ring and spoke with a few hikers that I met along the way. Heading back down to my equipment and expecting to have to do several carries to the road with all the stuff, I was pleasantly surprise to find, the two climbers that I had spoken to had gathered up all of the equipment at the dam, and had taken it to the stash by the side of the rode. These guys deserve a big shout out of thanks! With the dam only half done, I decided to take one day off and go back on Monday and trim some more. Armed with a fully loaded string trimmer, I went on the attack, unfortunately, I broke the head on the string trimmer and had to call it quits.
Hopefully next year this pandemic will be behind use and we can continue our annual stewardship of the land. I encourage all climbers who climb or hike at Ragged Mountain to help out. The base of the cliff is seeing heavy use and is in need of repair. We need help with with the stone wall and steps in the north gully. When the Gunk’s, NH, VT, and MA closed to climbing we had an increase in usage at Ragged. We asked people to refrain from climbing during the, “Stay at Home” orders, but many did not. With CFPA and the state of CT allowing hiking on the blue blazed New England Trial, we could not close our property. Show respect, and we hope to see you all out lending a hand at next years Trails Day event.
Off Belay,
Chuck Boyd