8 November-14 November
The final hitch! Though it is difficult to believe that the season has come to a close, team MOTRAC made the best of this bittersweet hitch by completing the survey of the Big Piney loop trail (an additional 6.30 miles), its associated connector trail (1.99 miles), and the Deer Track trail of the Kaintuck series (2.00 miles). And then team MOTRAC ran into the issue of sharing the woods with (hundreds!) of comrades toting shotguns and seeking out the slightest movement in the brush. While it was nice to see our public lands become such a popular destination, the crew felt that the best and safest option was to retreat from our familiar and beloved stomping grounds and let the hunters take over for their opening deer-gun weekend.
Feeling a bit dejected, we joined the party by dressing in blaze orange, and acted as Wallflowers by keeping ourselves on the edge of the woods, but NOT amongst the real party within the woods. For the final two days of the hitch, team MOTRAC scoured the nearby campgrounds of Roby Lake, Paddy Creek, and Slabtown, as well as the Wilderness Boundary Forest Service road and Slabtown Road, and came up with over 300 pounds of trash! With each of us picking up our own weight in trash (that’s a literal and metaphorical statement) we felt content to call our time at the Roby bunkhouse, and here in the Missouri Ozarks, a complete success.
In total this season, the MOTRACS crew completed 141.67 miles of TRACS surveys.
That number reflects 27 different trail sections in two districts of the Mark Twain National Forest.
A huge thank you to Scotty, James, Nancy and Leon from USFS Region 9 for making this season a reality, and of course to our mentors in Boise with the SCA.
Jessica (aka Carbon Copy) and Lincoln (aka Bear Claw): It will be impossible to "replace you in kind". Thanks for all your dedicated service!
