Today was completely devoted to hardcore. I got up and ate breakfast and then headed to the post office parking lot where everyone who is doing Hardcore meet. There we signed waviers and got into cars to start the drive to the work site. The objective of this two day project is to relocate some of the Appaclachain Trail from an old route with poor trail design to a new more environmentally sustianable trail. The old trail used to go straight up and down the mountain we were on and we are replacing it with a sloped trail that winds around the sides of the mountain. These genteler grades will both be easier on the hiker and allow more water to drain from the trail quicker reducing erroson greatly. I rode in Possum's car, a very nice lady who has retired recently to travel, and Santa's Helper, and older gentelman who was also a pleasure to spend time with. I played navigator for the drive and did a pretty good job. At the work site everyone grabbed tools and headed up the mount!
ain to a trail only visable by small red flags stuck in the leaves. Next we went to town pulling off the duff on the surface and side-hilling into the slope to form a flat tread to hike on. I found the work very tough as it showed me all the muscels that has becaome atrophied from disuse on the trail. Dispite this us hikers did a great job. With 80 people we built more than 1/4 mile of trail today in about 6 hours. We did so much work the organizers of Hardcore were scrambeling to mark more segemnts of trail to build before we finished the last ones. After that day of work we were all tired but in good spirits. Several of my buddies who I haven't seen in a long time are here; Snackbreak, Big Gulp, Walnut who is the Goat previously know as Sarah. From the worksite we went straight to dinner where they did a good job of statisfing the appetite of hungry hikers.
After that is was the goodies. Bob Peoples, a ledgend amongst the AT community and the owner of Kinkora, gave a thank you speech. Then he handed out handsome patches. That was all we were exspecting and would have been plenty but then he gave out shirts, hats, and about half a dozen cling stickers. In the end we all made off with a pretty good haul for only 6 hours work.
Then I spent another night at Kinkora but this time I hung my hammock to give a spot for someone inside. The temp is dropping again though so I suspect I will have another cold night. If that happens I think may bounce my hammock forward until the nightime temps warm up.
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