Upcoming Projects

    I came up with a logo for Adventurer's Project.  The green, of course, stands for greenery and the yellow stands for the sun.  The latter is very important because it gets hot here in Far SE Ohio, which our area includes 40 miles of the Buckeye Trail (North Country concurrent) in the Marietta Unit of the Wayne National Forest (The Wayne).  Hikers often underestimate their water consumption here.  And on the North Country Trail, it mostly stays above the 42nd parallel.  We're at about 39°N and our summers are more like Kentucky and Tennessee.  North Country is more like Vermont, New York State, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Northern Wisconsin, Northern Minnesota and North Dakota.  I'm certain they probably don't realize how hot it gets down here.

    Right now, I have some smog tubes (secondary air injection) on order for my 1987 Chevrolet G20 Sportvan.  They should be coming in tomorrow?  When I dismantled the former exhaust pipes, I realized that there was weakness in one of the exhaust manifold bolt holes.  Rather than wait for it to give way, I decided to replace the manifolds.  I have those now.  But I wasn't going to mess with trying to unbolt the smog tubes.  I'd probably round out their bolts if I tried and still not get them out?  I have new exhaust manifold gaskets, so this is going to be a complete replacement.

    The forest service has us doing some rather extensive modifications to the trail in The Wayne.  For one, every stream crossing needs to have ramps benched on both sides.  Benching is a part of trail maintenance where we have to widen, or re-establish the trail's tread, or the surface that you hike on.  More notibly, if you hike up a grade, that's "pitch."  But when building a trail, when the trail builders come across a hillside, but in the other dimension, leveling that out by benching, that's the "roll."  It has to be maintained every few years or so because of erosion.  And our off-road trail is so backcountry and narrow that it has to be done by hand manually with mattocks and Pulaski axes.

    The off-road in The Wayne for the most part was originally designed and built for the North Country Trail from 1983 to 1987.  By word of mouth, the NCTA struggled with getting maintainers from 1987 to 1997.  My impression is that for about 35 miles of off-road, they were working with about 4 volunteers if I had to guess.  10 miles of off-road per trail maintenance volunteer is 3x more than any one volunteer should ever have.

    There was a North Country Trail Association chapter in this area, but it was short lived.  The Buckeye Trail Association took over the maintenance and some of the routing administration in 2000.  But it took them about 5 years just to get the trail opened back up by mostly minimum standards.  So, I think I have to assume that some of the benching hasn't been maintained in 30 something years?

    In addition to being the lead for Adventurer's Project, I'm also the volunteer Section Supervisor for the Whipple Section - Buckeye Trail (North Country concurrent), which is the south of what the project supports in this region.  My two biggest projects are in the ballpark of the present day Whipple Section, Point 03/ Big Run Rd/ Township Rd 414 in Independence Township and Point 05/ Brooks by McCain Hill & Bean Ridge Roads to Point 06/ Brooks by Cow Run Roads in Lawrence Township, both of Washington County, Ohio.  

    The trail in The Wayne has a mountain bike concurrency, but that's by no means unusual for Distance Hiking Ohio.  With the tasks that need to be completed, there are some hiking related safety issues to iron out.  But what I see in it with the mountain bikers is something cooperative and diplomatic.  The hiking world really doesn't understand, or doesn't fully understand when I get like this.  I have no idea if this will work, but I am sure that it won't if we don't try.

    In the ballpark of Whipple 03/ Big Run Road, I've been working to the east of there so far.  And the trail ascends up to the top a ridge, where it's roll has been leveled along it's side.  But it wasn't well built.  Another BTA volunteer and I had to use our Pulaski axes to chop away the south side embankment to widen the trail.  Then i came up to an area with a 500lb boulder sticking out of it and a big slip on the other side.  With authorization from the forest service, I either have to do extensive work trying to get that boulder out and repairing that deep slip, or I'll have to reroute the trail within 50ft of the original?  And in order to know if I can reroute it, I'll have to approach the area from the opposite direction to know for sure?  If it's unattennable, then we'll have to work with what we've got.

    Whipple 05 - 06/ the Brooks Rd area features the Little Muskingum River Flats where the trail right next to the river in it's flood plane..  You could say that this place is in the Sitka, Moss Run and Dart areas of Washington County, Ohio.  It has five distinct features to it.  There's the East and West Highlands, Embankments - East & West and then there's the flats in the middle of it all.  The West Flats are no problem.  But the east end gets narrow.  The river embankment gets tight and wedges the trail against it and the river.  We're having erosion problems on the river's side of the trail and we need to reinforce that bank with some boulders and rocks.  But the boulders and rocks have been washed out to  a point at the start of the west end, which is a mile away.  That's a long way to haul heavy loads, especially during COVID-19.  But I think I might be able to do it with a wheel barrel if I bench ramps  into 3 stream crossings down there first?  I estimate that I alone could haul 6 loads to the site.  But the problem is that there's nowhere to stage piles of rocks and boulders out there, so every time a load is delivered, the boulders have to be set then.  I think that's going to impede the "assembly line" if you would?  The good news is that one of my forest service liaisons and I did some work on this site last year.  And the high side embankment was easy to bench.

      On the project's side of things, COVID-19 has made in-person trail promotion rather unattennable.  i was supposed to execute a project that could strengthen some of our weaker areas, but considering the people still wearing face masks and complying with state recommendations, it's not worth the fuel or time right now?  Regardless of anyone's particular persuasion, it's just a really bad time and conversation over it for these purposes are an utter waste of time.  From my end of these, we just have no choice but to ride this out in other ways.  I suppose that since I don't know this area too well, that walking through these towns, villages and cities to get a rough feeling of what they're all about could be a good idea?  And I could possibly engage people, say one at a time?

Geo Photo Catalog

It might be 9 days before I can continue Adventurer's Project's "Geo Photo Catalog."  It has several applications.

Application #1: A photographic record of the trail to educate Buckeye Trail Association volunteers and a reference for future maintenance needs.

Application #2: Produce photos for trail adopter procurement.

Application #3: Social media content.  The photos will be released about 3 at a time in between other posts and help with fresh content during the cold days.

Application #4: Photos for Adventurer's Project's website.

Application #5: Pictures for trail promotion and volunteer procurement.

Application #6: Determine where we need to take pictures with better cameras.  Those photos can be used for trail promotion, the website and social media.

Adventurer's Project supports the Road Fork and Whipple Sections of the Buckeye Trail (North Country concurrent) in Noble, Monroe, Washington and Morgan Counties of Ohio.  The photos are taken about every 50yds or less in both directions.  Currently, the photos are being taken at my smartphone's highest possible quality.  As this region's off-road total is about 40 miles, it should produce over 2,600 photos.  That's far more than Buckeye and North Country's hikers have produced at the moment. 

On-road portions have been recorded via video with spoken locations from an automobile.  Aside from that, Google Street View covers some of this area.  So at this point, it's mostly about photographing about 40 miles of off-road paths on foot.  And I'm earning my 2020 North Country Trail 100 Mile Challenge, which I've missed other challenges like this in previous years.

The "geo" part pertains to enabling my smartphone camera's "locator" to produce geotags.  This process embeds the location of where the photo was taken into the properties of the file.  From there, software can be used to extract their coordinates and then embed them into placemarks into a Google KML/ KMZ file.  In terms of the maintenance record, volunteer users can follow the photos, particularly with the GIS/ GPS track of the Road Fork and Whipple Sections.  So, this is to see the trail's line with the photos on an application like Google Earth and probably ArcGIS products?

In previous years, the camera locator was on by default.  But I like to refer to geotags as "creeper tags."  It's unfortunate because people were physically followed by others when they downloaded their pictures and had the geotags extracted.  They could tell by the days of the week when they took their kids to karate class for instance.

But recently, to enable the geotag feature, there are two safeties.  One is that the phone's locator must be enabled.  When it is, this is what enables the smartphone's mapping and navigation.  The second step is to enable the locator a second time, but in the camera app's settings.  I find it to be a wonderful tool for the trail, but I tend to use it wisely.  As of the time of this post, geotags are automatically stripped by Facebook, but not by every social media company.  Presently, Adventurer's Project is only on Facebook and no other social media service due to insufficient manpower to admin more.

At last count, it takes about 1 hour to photograph 2 miles of off-road footpath here in what I call "Far SE Ohio," which is in the Appalachian Foothills.  That's that's about 4 times faster than it takes to initially blaze (painted navigational markers) one.  But still, the "stop and go" is harder on my body and I haven't scheduled this photographing over 7 round trip miles yet.

So, that just about sums up Adventurer's Project's Geo Photo Catalog.

BTA Support, Adventurer's Project, Photo Catalog of the Trail

The BTA has offered some support.  And we're certainly going to take them up on it.  On the maintenance side, we do have access to a DR String Trimmer, which makes cutting our brushy areas easier than a weed eater.  We have the offer of getting a link for Adventurer's Project's Facebook page on the Buckeye Trail's.  And we do have an offer for guidance in regards to converting Adventurer's Project into a chapter.

But what I really want to talk about is my own person acquisition of 4 Pulaski axes and 4 sets of hand pruners and folding saws.  If I asked for BTA support on these, it could take them weeks to assemble these.  Meanwhile, our area is mostly rural, but our Facebook following is mostly urban, suburban and exurban.  I like to think that I'm prepared for volunteers of any income level.

If I need volunteers, seeing that I get my car fixed, I'll just go out and get them.  And people who don't have tools will get them on loan.  That way when people are available and we're ready to go... well then, we're ready to go.  I have everything that I need for light and the most volunteer intensive heavy maintenance.

For those of you tuning in from distance trails other than Buckeye, I have maintenance organized into two categories.  "Light maintenance" is the pruning and blazing.  That's the least that we can expect from trail adopters.  But "heavy maintenance" is the muscles and the machines.  That encompasses the DR Mowers, string trimmers, weed whackers and benching.  It's best that these be done in a group.

Adventurer's Project has a unique way of dividing this up.  We're raising two crews.  One is the primary maintenance which consists of the trail adopters on mostly light maintenance.  Two is the chapterside volunteers who most concentrate on other aspects of running a distance trail.  In theroy, the adopters are the "trail promotion reserve."  And the chapterside volunteers are the "trail maintenance reserve."  My idea is that if we can get the adopters together for heavy maintenance, about two times a year, we'll call up the Maintenance Reserve and add everybody into the mix for these projects.

On the flip side, it takes about 9 volunteers to man the shifts when we do trail promotion at a typical 3 day festivals.  The idea is that we'll call the chapterside volunteers first.  And if we can't fill the shifts, we'll then go to the Trail Promotion Reserve.

Currently, we have 3 maintainers on the Whipple Section and 2 on the Road Fork.  Unfortunately, that 5 is out of 20.  But, we picked up one or two? Getting more in the short term is contingent on the condition of my vehicles.    On the chapterside of things, I roughly estimate that we have 5 of 9.  And utilizing the maintenance reserve is also contingent on my vehicle's conditions, but this is more eminent.

To get those trail adopters, the next step is in developing a "Vacant Segment Showcase" on Adventurer's Project's Facebook page and website.  It's a project of mine.  But while I'm out there, I'm also going to work on the project's contribution to the BTA's digital map repository.  It's a fully geotagged, photo catalog of the off-road trail.  It's also a supply of photos for Facebook to get us through the winters.  The audience is media hungry and the winters are difficult to furnish content for. 

I've started it, but I don't have enough content to keep the audience occupied.  But, one good day between the Archer's Fork Loop and Scenic River Trailhead in the Marietta Unit of The Wayne (National Forest) can change that.  I have enough battery power for my smartphone to last 25 miles straight of photo cataloging on one charge.

Priority 1 Maintenance

While I don't have jurisdiction over much of this, the Road Fork Section, Points 27 (7/2011 map & guide) to 31, perhaps out to Whipple 03 should have the 1st trail maintenance.  And this should take place before June 30th annually.  The reason is that we have an economic cooridor between these points.  I say perhaps Whipple 03 because Points 01 - 03 are not a very popular destination.  And that segment has an adopter who usually comes in July.  I supervise that section, but that segment is something that I shouldn't touch.  Probably the most that I can do is hike through and collect waypoints on downed trees so that my NFS point of contact can cut them?

From the time of the ground thawing to May 31 is the most ideal time for benching.  This is the physical widing of the trail's tread with a mattock axe.  It's typically done on a hillside.  I must say that I have no idea what condition my lower back will be in by that time?

At the moment, I have to get in control of my own finances. I'm projecting that January 1st will the be the first time my budget can properly reset and get straightened out? At the previous board meeting, we're not getting any back up.  But I didn't request any.  The BTA has enough on it's plate and I've decided that we're going to go it alone. And it's becoming imperative that we start becoming more independent locally.

This is where January comes into play.  I'm going to use it for trail promotion, but I'm not ready to publically state where, when or how?

I'm Diverted

I've been plenty diverted here. Trail promotion for Adventurer's Project is a whole other animal.  There needs to me two of me here.

I advertised the Road Fork/ Whipple Work Week on Adventurer's Project's Facebook page and the Buckeye Trail Association's group today. So far, we have four RSVP's and possibly 4 others.  I'd really like to get some of the trail photographed and geotagged this year. Adventurer's Project's internet media really needs them.  And we also need a photo for the new Road Fork and Whipple maps.