Forest Society Land Stewards BLOG: Lost River Gorge: still buried in snow!

Friday, May 16, 2014

Lost River Gorge: still buried in snow!

At our annual spring cleaning workday at Lost River Reservation, we usually look forward to spreading mulch and pruning flower beds, painting signage and posts, sweeping the gorge boardwalk, doing some trail maintenance and pruning the native garden. The amalanchier trees are usually blooming, and we worry about how bad the black flies will be. This year spring was so slow in coming that by May there were no flies or flowers of any kind, and the primary task on our workday was snow removal from the gorge boardwalk! As you can imagine, sending visitors down into a gorge filled with snow on opening day would be problematic, so our volunteers got to work with shovels and rock bars. Dave Anderson, Rita Carroll, and Frank Allen led a group of about 15 volunteers (mostly land stewards) down into the gorge. When the day was over and the boardwalk clear, Dave commented, "I was worried that we had too many people heading down for snow removal, but when we got down there and I saw how high the snow still was, I was glad to have all hands on deck!"

Rita Carroll digs into the snow removal (photo: F. Allen)

A group of volunteer stewards and staff, finishing up a section (photo: D. Anderson)

Since there were more than 23 people at the workday, we still had volunteers to help with the regular pruning, mulching, painting, and trail work. The folks with White Mountain Attractions (who operate the gorge in the summer) treated us to a delicious lunch inside the visitor center, where we could warm up from all that snow and ice and the bitter wind that was whipping during the workday. It was a memorable Lost River spring cleaning for many of our volunteers who make this event an annual spring tradition. Remember that year the snow in the gorge was up to our necks, and we had to shovel it all out?!?!