www.vacreepertrail.us

Resurfacing Project Underway

A long-awaited resurfacing of the Damascus section of the Virginia Creeper Trail began July 23, 2009.
After realizing that the club had insufficient funds to complete the entire project, club members decided to volunteer
and see how much of the project they could complete. The first stage is grading down to the old railroad bed,
and this will be followed by graveling and compacting the trail. The latter stages will require greatly increased
expenditures since the orignal grant was written primarily due to the increased cost of stone and transportation.
Virginia's Department of Recreation and Conservation is providing funds for this project.

First steps: Do we really know what we're doing here?	Mary and Lisa pitch in and the pace of work increases.
Brad and his John Deere were invaluable in enabling the crew to cover a great amount of trail the first day.	Chris demonstrates the use of the potato rake, while Link, Mary, Jim, and Lisa clean the trail of vegetation.
Brad scrapes the trail's center section into mounds of sod and grass and some gravel. The crew then breaks up these mounds and clears out the grass. Later it was found that using the John Deere to scoop up and discard this material made the work go much faster.
After and before: the bottom part of the photo illustrates the surface after it has been scraped and raked. Later a gravel surface will be put down and compacted, bringing the trail up to a higher standard. The top of the photo illustrates much of the trail in the Damascus section, narrow one-lane paths that resemble an automobile road to the extent that cars frequently drive down the trail in this section. Contact the Virginia Creeper Trail Club if you would like to volunteer with this project.

 

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