Hiking Up a Hill, Painting Trees, Cutting Brush, Clearing Ditches . . . and Such

On 29-May, my friend Marty and I spent the day hiking up a hill, painting trees, cutting brush, clearing ditches, and such.   The "hill" we climbed was Mt. Tremont, and the "painting", "cutting", and "ditch-clearing" activities were all associated with my trail-adopter duties for maintenance of the 2.8 mile Mt. Tremont Trail.

It was great to have Marty's help, especially on this particular trip since there was a need to do some intense brushing on the upper 1.5 mile of trail, and also the need to do some blazing since several hikers had reported some difficulty with following the trail during winter travel.   With Marty doing a lion's share of the brushing, it made the dual tasks of blazing and brushing go so much faster.  

Also, it was very helpful having another set of hands to assist with removal of downed trees from the trail corridor.  There are still a few blowdowns that remain, but hikers should find these easy enough to duck under.  The trunks of these trees are quite large and require either a chainsaw for complete removal, or certainly a lot more time than we had available to hack away at them with an ax!  

Other than a snapshot taken of a blaze being painted, we didn't take time to photo-document our other trail-work.  We waited until we got to the top of Mt. Tremont to take most of our snapshots.  Well, let's say we took snapshots once the rain subsided and eventually stopped!  At the very moment we arrived at the summit, it started to rain.  It was just a bit comical that not a single drop of rain had fallen while we were clearing brush, painting blazes, etc.  But mind you, this was NOT a bad thing!   

The rain didn't last long, and besides, perhaps that was simply Mother Nature's way of cooling us down and washing away some of the sweat!  It's one way to look at it! :-)

I'll just bore you with a few snapshots taken during our Mt. Tremont trail work adventure.

The first photo shows Marty taking a well-deserved rest along the way.

The next snapshot is a collage of two photos taken by Marty.  One obviously shows a tree being blazed, and the other shows an umbrella being put to good use atop Mt. Tremont.

And lastly, shown below is a collage of two snapshots that I took from Mt. Tremont.  It was hazy after the rain shower, and ergo, the vistas that are shown of Carrigain Notch and of Sawyer Ponds are less than crisp!

On our way back home, we pulled into Fabyan's Station at Bretton Woods to pick up some items.  While there, we were entertained by a fox that was lurking about in the parking lot.  It did NOT appear to be sick or diseased.  My guess is that this sly fox simply had figured out that that a Bretton Woods location is a great place to panhandle for food!

Shown below is one of the fox-photos that I snapped.  In this particular shot, the fox has apparently become bored and is yawning while waiting for something to happen!

So there you have it!  Although this Blog report is filled with relatively few words, the day itself was filled with a lot of fun and accomplishment. 

Thanks again Marty for your help and your company!

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