Trail Maintenance Tutorial
- 2. Basics Congratulations on earning your spot to Caspers! We will be restoring/maintaining a trail as our stewardship project, and it’s gonna be tight! WAC officers and officer-elects went to Caspers Wilderness Park last April and we attended a workshop to guide YOU on how to fix up a trail.
- 3. TOOLS Ranger Adam Shuck introduced some tools that we will be using in our trail maintenance. Each tool has a unique function and should be handled with care. There are shovels, axes, hedge clippers and other tools that I don’t remember the name of. The tools will be used to pound, excavate, cut, flatten, etc. the trail.
- 4. Rules To ensure our safety and our advisers ‘happiness, we must follow these directions: 1. Hold your tool close to the head of the tool and have the sharp side facing down. 2. Hold your tool on the side that the road is going downhill from. So if the road is slanting to the right, hold the tool with your right hand. 3. Keep a good 20 feet from the person in front and behind you. This is to prevent any tools from harming any close by friends. 4. Do not lag or hold up the line. You will have rocks in your backpack, provided by Mr. Bui :D
- 5. What, Why, How? Trails need to be restored because people, animals, and natural things distort the trail and make it less safe to walk on. Sometimes we need water bars to divert water to another place on the trail, or we want to make the trail smoother and less rigid. We must install water bars by using rocks or wood, make the trail smooth and flat by fixing the dirt around, make the trail more appealing so that it may last for future generations. And if the trail has bushes or cacti touching you as you’re walking along the trail, then the clippers should cut off the branches and throw away the clippings to a place where you can’t see them.
- 6. For more information, ask the officers or advisers about trail maintenance. THE END!