I just started pruning Whipple Section, Pts. 06 - 05 today. This is my longest two points that includes a 300ft drop, rise, high growth along the Little Muskingum River and then my field of picker bushes in the east. It's Whipple's longest distance between points at 4.1 miles. Since we don't have the oil and gas access drives mapped yet, there's no choice but to do the whole thing. Today, I found about new 3 downed trees. We just had the sawyer (chainsaw) crews clean Whipple up in mid-May. This merely shows that the section's off-road may have to be re-inspected just to take account of the obstructions so I can call them up to the Buckeye Trail Association's (BTA) "Trail Management Team..." again. They're scheduled to come down in mid-September anyways.
That's fine. The re-inspection will give me time to collect more GPS data on the location of obstructions so I can determine if there is a pattern to how they occur. That might help us manage the trail better in the future.
But I did recognize one of the access roads closer to Pt. 05. I could see Brooks Road/ Township Rd 94 from the Buckeye/ North Country National Scenic Trail (BT/NCNST). It was getting dark and once I started at my pricker field, I had hand pruners and realized that I need to use hedge clippers instead and do a more "blunt" job. Well, that's alright because Pts. 04 - 05 are short.
The only thing that concerns me is that on the access drive that I was on, ATV's have bypassed NFS's gate. BT/NCNST is either so small that they didn't notice, or they generally know that our trail obstructions are only cleared 3ft wide and they could damage their vehicles. As far as I can tell, much of our terrain does not support bypassing obstructions like it does in the other, or Athens Unit of the Wayne National Forest.
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