Max Patch on National Trails Day

Max Patch on National Trails Day - 6/1/19

The first Saturday in June celebrates local, state and federal trails, recognizing the benefits and enjoyment of nature, promoting awareness of recreational trail services, and offering opportunities to give back as good stewards of our public lands.  This day of recognition has taken on significance in a myriad of way: hiking clubs host workdays, environmental organizations offer education workshops, state parks lead hikes, and hikers take to the trails. The PR machine works for months to get the word out to take a day to enjoy, give back and/or pay it forward to protect and honor the lands we love.

Carolina Mountain Club maintains 92.6 miles of the Appalachian Trail, including the area lovingly known as Max Patch. In fact, Max Patch gets “loved to death” and is in frequent need of trail maintenance and rehab. That’s the paradox of easy accessibility to a special place: you want people to come, but when they do, they wear it out. CMC sponsors a National Trails Day workday and I joined nearly 100 people in the 2019 efforts at Max Patch. How do you organize 100 people to work on a trail? With a lot of planning.

Getting our marching orders; tools provided, but some folks brought their own

Sections had been prepped for the day with gravel, fencing and other material put in place. Some groups worked on the signage area near the parking area, some filled in eroded tread, some worked on patches of invasive plants. I followed a crew chief in charge of rehabbing a short section of trail in the trees near the base of Max Patch. First we went through a lengthy getting-to-know-each-other exercise and detailed safety rules and precautions. We were tasked with widening our section of trail, digging out all rocks and roots and sloping the trail just right for drainage. Working in pairs, we spread up and down the trail.

If you’ve done trail work yourself, you know that you can’t keep it up for long, changing your work angle frequently or your back will tell you all about it later on.  Our trail bosses were incredibly picky about the precise grade! We took a short break to eat lunch on the trail as one woman identified every single birdsong (hard to hear the birdsong over all the commentary…)

Best part of the day: walking up and over Max Patch bald to join the rest of the crews. The sky, the sun, the clouds, the intensity of green and blue and white, were stunning.

 “When there is mist on the mountains, it is beautiful, and when there is no mist, it is also beautiful.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh