What:
Saturday May 31st at 7 am Sean Blanton will be leading a trail maintenance class at Black Rock Mountain State Park. Open to all fit and able bodied people who can hike and swing digging tools without getting themselves in trouble physically or mentally.
Sean is a veteran US for service certified chainsawyer. He’s been chainsawing for over a decade now as a volunteer trail maintainer. He’s also been helping clear trails, build them and has taught a couple classes on how to maintain them. Each year he does 200 to 500 hours of work. Doing 50+ work days a year while leading the majority of those. Is done work from Virginia to Florida, Utah to Oregon and everything in between.
He hopes to use his knowledge to train the next generation of trail maintainers. The common misconception is that trails, maintain themselves or rather our tax dollars pay for them to be clear.
The reality is it takes tens of thousands of hours every year to maintain the trails that we use locally.
Sean will focus on the safety aspect of working with dangerous tools and working around others. He will teach you how to properly build and maintain sustainable trails.
Will be focusing on the trails at Black Rock Mountain State Park because they were not built sustainably and have several issues we hope to help with. We are very thankful to have these trails.
We will be focusing primarily on digging and reclaiming some of the trail that erosion has been fighting against.
This will be physically intense and is definitely for people who are physically fit. Men and women and people of all ages are welcome. Most trail maintainers are 50 plus.
What to bring:
You must have the following no exceptions.
If you need reeves feed and seed in Clayton sells this.
- Eye protection. Safety glasses or goggles
- Ear protection (we might have some hedgers we use)
- Long sleeves and long pants.
- Shoes with good grip
- A small running or backpack with 2 L of water, minimal snacks and lunch.
- Cell phone.
What to expect.
Sean plans to talk for 30 to 45 minutes explaining everything we’re trying to accomplish what we’re going to do. Then we will hike together several sections in need repair and work. Then Sean will give a hand on demonstration. Everyone will then start working on the trail. We plan to do 2 to 3 hours of work. Taking a break for lunch baby and as we finish regroup and talk about what we learned.
The end goal is going to be to have local folks adopt sections of the trails with Black rock Mountain State Park. This will be their section to assess, work and make sure any major maintenance or stuff above their skill level gets reported.
