Gap Mountain

It was quite cool this morning so I thought it would be a great day to do a little trail work.  There is a point on the North Trail of Gap Mountain where hikers create short-cuts along a switchback in the trail.  I needed some new material to brush it in so I figured I may as well take the brush from a nearby view point in an old orchard.  One thing led to another and now the view is open again.  Maybe I will return in the spring to do a little trimming on the apple trees.

Before

After

If you have never hiked to the top on Gap Mountain in Troy, autumn is the time to do it.  The trail is much quieter than any of the trails on Monadnock and the view at the top is great and at only 1 1/2 miles, about half the distance of Monadnock.

Thank You Volunteers!

More than 50 people gathered this week for our annual Forest Society Volunteer Appreciation Dinner.  Guests included not only land stewards but also office volunteers, participants in Monadnock Trails Week, and green building and floodplain tour guides.  President-Forester Jane Difley welcomed the group and announced our Volunteer of the Year award, which is being given to land steward Linda Howes this year for her wonderful work providing visitor outreach at Grafton Pond Reservation.  Then it was time dig in and eat lasagna, salad, bread, and cake...while of course socializing with fellow volunteers and staff.  Thank you to everyone who came to the dinner and made it a great success, and thank you to those who could not make it, but should absolutely still be thanked!!

Dump Pickers 101

Last week we had probably one of the least appealing land steward workdays I can think of at Moose Mountains Reservation: a dump clean-up.  This wasn't just a collection of materials left by people not wanting to pay a dump fee to dispose of their waste now and then; this was years (decades even) of household trash dumped in a single location.  Since that location is very visible - right next to the Moose Mountains parking area and kiosk - we scheduled this workday to get as much of it cleaned up as possible.

 "before" shots of the MMR dump

Land Steward Bob Lyon and DRED employee Bob Spoerl haul trash to the dumpster

Jason finds an old knife

 The metal pile (L) and the site when we were finished (R)

Thankfully the trash had been there long enough that most of the organic material was gone, leaving mostly glass bottles and metal, but when we started digging and bottles started breaking it definitely got stinky pretty quickly.  From some of the items we found (old license plates, soda cans, etc) we were able to date the dump to the late 40s and early 50s.  The coolest finds were probably old bottles and farm equipment (including a horseshoe); the creepiest were old doll parts, and the grossest a full jar of cold cream from the 1950s (wrinkle treatment, anyone?).  When we had cleaned up several layers of trash, we covered over the site with branches and leaves to conceal it, and called it a day.  Only about a quarter of the 30yd dumpster was filled, but we also hauled out a half dumpster full of metal (taken by scrappers within minutes of Wendy listing it on Craigslist) and about 25 tires.  We are truly grateful for the 8 volunteers who came out to help on this workday- it was not a pretty one!

creepiest find

The dump crew (minus Wendy, taking the photo)