Adirondacks Day 5 - Last Day

  This has been an amazing few days. The work has been really physically demanding, but SO satisfying! Today we managed to finish something that I didn't think we'd be able to. We started this yesterday, but it was really difficult to find small rocks. We were supposed to put a layer of stones in the bottom of what will be the turnpike treadway for drainage.

But the helper who came today, Kevin, found an old dry stream with lots of small stones, and we hauled rocks in canvas bags. We broke up some more rocks from the place where we'd found big rocks the day before, and we found some small rocks under wind thrown trees. We finished lining the entire medium-length section.

We did just a little bit more work on the drainage channel across the mud pit before lunch, but we were definitely interested in something a little easier for the afternoon.

So, since we'd hiked all that section I described as roughed-in trail yesterday, and knew it was getting difficult to follow, we took to it with rakes and a McLeod, and a saw. We aren't supposed to do much sawing, but only took out things that were dead and down across the trail and small. It's a balancing act to keep the trail clear and the authorities happy.

Of course more leaves will cover this in the fall, but the more you can keep a lightly-used treadway clear, the easier it will become to find and people will hike it. One reason it's still lightly used is that one of the Adirondack rules is that it can't be marked as North Country Trail until it's complete from road to road. That means all that part that we bushwhacked between flagging tape markers yesterday has to be finished, and a bridge has to be built, and all that turnpike filled with gravel and dirt before blue blazes can be put on this 5 miles of trail.

We also did small adjustments in a few places we noticed yesterday where the trail went down into a dip, but it was much better to keep to the higher ground. Mary is standing on the re-aligned trail with the solid line, while the dotted line is what was being walked- that dip will just turn into a mud hole. We raked and fixed 0.2 mile of trail.

Best other find of the day is this slime mold. Some sort of tube slime. Very cool!

North Country Trail miles for 2021 is at 385.

North Country Trail, Hoffman Notch Wilderness, NY, Dirgylot parking out and back- total 4 miles

See Day 4