Hitch #6: 8/22 - 8/26

1. Santanoni Historic Preserve
On their hands this week, the crew at Santanoni had an epic 32 foot bridge to construct! The single bridge required the felling of three trees and the entirety of the hitch to complete. To get the extremely heavy stringers (the long logs used to span the bridges length) across the gap, the crew used a Griphoist, our winch and rigging system that uses physics to allow us to lift things like boulders and huge logs that are thousands of pounds in weight.

2. Wilmington Wild Forest
The much-anticipated bridge construction has finally begun on the Wilmington snowmobile trail. This week the crew built a burly sill (the part of the bridge that sits on the edge and holds the weight) designed to withstand the weight of snowmobiles and probably much more. Sitting pretty at 12' x 4' x 4', you can see the huge structure in the photo below. The structure was then filled with rocks and a similar, though much smaller version was built on the opposite side of the bank. The crew also had time to brush further down the trail, as well as move some rocks out of the way and even plant a few trees!

3. Panther Mountain
At one of a handful of "Panther Mountain"s located in the park, the crew working at this particular Panther Mountain had the biggest rock project of the season. They learned about the intricacies and difficulties of setting huge rocks into the trail, as well as the rewarding feeling of seeing it all finally come together in a structure that will probably remain standing for decades to come. They were working on a section of a very popular trail that has seen too many people, too much rain, and too little maintenance. The trail, at points, is over 12-feet in width, and the crew's job was multi-faceted: get the trail out of the water, keep the water off the trail, and make sure people stick to the new trail. This involved the creation of a 16-foot retaining wall used to sturdy up one side of the trail, while the other side was "scarified" (made scary to keep people out while allowing to water to pass as it will); the construction of a 3-step staircase in a narrower gulleyed out section of trail; and, most importantly, the construction of two water bars to direct the water off the side of the trail (constructed above each of the former two structures in order to protect them from as much erosion as possible). Good work, guys and girls!

4. Bear Pond, St. Regis Canoe Area