Our first hitch was four days and began with office work for a lot of prep for our first TrACS surveys.
Monday started off with a trip to the GMNF Headquarters in Rutland, VT. We met with Carol Burd and heard about GMNF specific TrACS. After grabbing some coffee, we headed to the Manchester District Ranger Station, which will be our field office for the season. Here we met a few of the Forest Service employees that have been a big help in starting off this season. With our Trail Management Objectives in hand, we set out planning our next few days with mapmaking, creating ERPs and making a lot of copies of TrACS forms on Rite in the Rain paper.
Tuesday, we were back in Manchester at first but finally got into the field. We headed to the Stratton Mountain area to the snowmobile trail called Top of the Mountain. We started and finished our first TrACS survey and celebrated with a short hike back to the truck on the AT/LT in the rain! Lucas and I had a great feeling of accomplishment as the day winded down.
We were lucky enough to start Wednesday off with a meeting at the Ranger Station, which was held so that the new District Head Ranger could officially meet everyone and hear their updates and concerns. For us, it was a great opportunity to meet everyone, as well, and hear what they do and about the projects they are currently working on. After more office work, we got a late start on a new trail, Cemetery Run, which we will finish later in the season.
Our final day of the hitch, Thursday, we reviewed trail specs about snowmobile trails and headed out to start our major project of the summer, the 50 plus miles of snowmobile trail Corridor 7. We completed 3 miles of the trail after starting around 11am.
Hitch 1 Totals
Trails TrACS’d: 29746
Additional Trails Hiked: 26112
