Let's Get Muddy

It's Spring, it's Connecticut, and it's raining all the time it seems.  Which makes it very muddy to do trail work.  In some places people could reasonably say lets wait until it's dryer to do trail construction projects.  Some people might say that, but not us.......

The Paugussett Trail from Constitution Boulevard North to Meadow Street is a boney, wet, root-filled ankle twister that is just not the most pleasant to hike or walk.  For 2024 one of our big projects is to fix this by improving drainage, adding crushed stone & gravel, cutting trees, and making a better walking surface.  Despite Mother Nature.

Today we had about 21 volunteers show up to move crushed stone in along the wetter and rootier sections of the Paugussett Tr. listed above.  This is the group photo at the beginning of the work party.  Note how clean and mud free they looked at the beginning.

But, prior to this.  Mark Vollaro cleared out a place to dump stone, and then the Shelton Highways and Bridges Department responded to our request and dropped a load of 3/4" Processed Aggregate off.  Thanks very, very much to H&B for helping us out. 

Mark and Ray pre-fab'ed some temporary walkways across the muddy spots to help us wheel in stone.

About 104 l.f. of walks to be precise.

 

Which were then wheeled in and dumped off and spread by our great team of volunteers.

Basically, volunteers loaded many wheelbarrows with crushed stone and brought the stone into muddy and rooty areas in the trail, dumped their loads, and others spread the material out with shovels and rakes.

                            

Everybody got lots of practice with shovels and wheelbarrows.  There was no exam afterwards though.

At the end of the day it was a job well done with lots of muddy boots and pants to show for it.

Thanks to Anne, Jeff, Brooklyn, Nolan, Dillon, Ryan, Ethan, Danny, Bodie, John, Jeff, Cooper, Camille, Ellen, Val, Luis, Michael, Erik, Bill, Mark, Terry & Teresa.

We fixed up about 400 l.f. of trail and used up most of the crushed stone pile that was dumped off by the City.  Great progress - TBC.