LOCALadk Magazine

Fall 2018 LOCALadk Magazine 19 LOCALadk The first five months of the SC A ADK Corps program is spent building community and technical skills, both integral to a successful season. The rest of the season is spent on 'Hitches'. A Hitch is a five- or 10 -day period when crews work on a specific project, often in the backcountr y. This part of the season is dedicated to improving trails and other facil- ities in the Adirondacks. Completing incredibly challenging projects while living with the same group of people in a back- countr y setting 24-7 is at the heart of what makes the ex- perience meaningful. The skills of navigating and resolving conflict are often as important as those of building bridges and setting stone. Trail maintenance may be condensed to the following ad- age: 'Get the trail out of the water or get the water out of the trail.' The ADK Corps Crew that is currently working on the Pharaoh Lake Trail is building a stone turnpike to elevate the trail tread above a long and muddy section on the popu- lar trail in the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness. When trails become muddy, users often walk around the muddy section, not through it, resulting in a wider trail and additional environ- mental degradation. The project, like most backcountr y trail work, presents challenges: • Packing in all the necessar y tools, food, and gear for more than two miles. The packs are usually 60 -70 pounds, and crew members often have to carr y a tool in each hand, too. • Bugs of biblical proportions. Nighttime in the tent is the only real respite. Picture eating lunch with your long sleeve shirt and work gloves still on, only lifting up your bug net quickly to take a bites. • Working with the same crew, in the backcountr y, for 10 straight days. The only 'escape' is sleep (in a shared tent). • Food quality and quantity. Feeding six hard working adults for 10 days takes a lot of food. But even when you're hungr y, dinners consisting of some combination of rice, lentils, quinoa, pasta, and veggies can eventu- ally lose appeal. • Putting on wet and impossibly dirty pants, socks, and boots day after day. • Missing friends and family. • Leaky tent seams. • Day after day of incredibly demanding physical labor. • No raincoat is waterproof if you are doing trail work in it. The Pharaoh Lake Trail crew spent much of the 10 -day hitch moving materials—largely stone and mineral soil. Granite, a stone commonly found in the Adirondacks and useful for building trail structures, weighs about 170 pounds per cubic foot. The crew moved countless tons of granite to address this stretch of muddy and wet trail. Their days were spent performing incredibly demanding physical labor rearranging and reshaping stones and soil. The result is a sustainable section of trail that requires ver y little maintenance and will be there until the next glacier comes along. At the end of their 10 -day hitch the crew had the satisfying experience of watching hikers use the newly built stone turn- pike, a structure that blends so well with the environment that hikers often don't even notice it. Trail users often stopped to thank the crew while they were working on the project. After learning that the crew was there volunteering to do such demanding work, their gratitude for and curiosity about the crew often grew. When the crew was asked some version of the question " Why did you sign up for this!? " The replies varied but were usually along the lines of, "I want to give back to the environment," "I have been in school my whole life and want to do something tangible and get my hands dirty," "I want a challenge," or "I want to work and live in a wilderness setting." The two-plus mile hike back to the trailhead gave the crew time to reflect on the work and experience, and consider how a season of challenging work in remote settings on a close-knit team has changed them.

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