Ladies Trail Work Day
It was a brisk October Sunday morning and around 10 ladies from the local community gathered at the Gateway trailhead parking lot for one of our organized trail work events. Jennie, the most recently trained volunteer crew leader, led the group.
As a group, we introduced ourselves. I was excited to see a lot of familiar and new faces. Only a couple volunteers had done trail work in the past, so Jennie was managing a bunch of inexperienced, but obedient volunteers.
We hiked up Gateway trail for about ½ mile until we cut off to the left on a new connector trail that PCTC is designing and building. This new trail will connect to newly acquired land adjacent to Gateway trail along Brush Mountain, adding many more miles of multi-use trails.
Jennie went through a safety review and did a great job teaching us about each tool and what they are used for. A Pulaski is great for cutting roots and a McLeod is useful for removing “duff” and berm from a trail. I learned organic matter is called duff and is terrible for holding water on the trail. We were instructed to cut and pull the duff – we don’t want that organic matter anywhere close to the trail.
We organized ourselves into groups to figure out a method that made sense: cut the bank, give the bank a fade haircut, pull the duff away, clip and dig the roots, even out and tamp the trail. We got into a rhythm, taking turns chopping roots and preemptively naming different sections of the trail.
We worked on different sections on this trail for 3+ hours until it was time to wrap up, but first we all took swings at a huge root before erupting in cheers when Emma finally removed it. We hiked back with tired arms and smiled at all the progress we had made.
The idea for a “ladies-only” trail day is to encourage women to undertake the challenge of trail maintenance in a setting where they wouldn't be self-conscious about learning new skills. It feels truly amazing to not only help take care of the trails I treasure so much but be involved with an organization like PCTC that empowers other ladies to do so as well. Stay tuned for details on the next ladies trail work day.
