🌿 Stewardship Notes!

🌿 What to Expect at Workdays: Trail Building 🔨🥾 Building a trail involves many different steps, so when you come out to a trail building workday, you could be working on a variety of tasks! Today, we’re highlighting a few common ones. The first step in building a trail is preparing the trail tread, which is the surface you actually walk on. It needs to be firm, stable, and relatively flat. You'll use hand tools to scrape away debris, exposing the solid soil underneath in a path about 3 feet wide. You may need to make a bench cut, where you cut into the hillside to create space for a flatter tread. You might also use various hand tools to fill holes or remove obstacles from the trail such as rocks, roots, or stumps. The next step is clearing the trail corridor, the space that you walk through. For pedestrian trails, the trail corridor should be 3-4 feet wide and 7-8 feet tall. You'll use loppers and hand saws to remove limbs or saplings growing into this area. Always follow the instructions of your workday leader for correct technique when cutting living plants. Some trails need infrastructure like steps, bridges, or signs. If your workday focuses on one of these tasks, the workday leader will give you instructions, but you'll generally be using hand tools or the occasional power drill to anchor wood steps with rebar, assemble bridge parts, or install signage. We hope you learned some about trail building, and look around for new trail building events at the link in our bio! 📸 Indigo Roper-Edwards, Dave Burbank, John Prince [Image Descriptions: Volunteers trail building and moving gravel; volunteers lopping tree branches away from the trail; volunteers moving dirt and clearing debris; volunteers building stairs] #stewardshipnotes #trailbuiding #fieldwork #landstewardship #protectwhatmatters #hikingnc #outdooractivities #events #enoriver