S.W.E.A.T. Crew Session 3: The Bonus Crew

We have already made it to Session Three of S.W.E.A.T. Crew! This week we had returning volunteers from Session two, Logan, and Caitlin, join us again, and then new volunteers Ray, Bill, Sarah F., Sarah E., and Rob. This crew session, we hiked up Russell Field Trail, a 5-mile hike that we had already hiked during Session One, to Russell Field Shelter. The hike in was pretty nice, since it was a shorter hike, and the crew made it to camp around three o’clock that afternoon. Our trail section that the crew covered was a 5.5-mile section from Spence Field Shelter to Little Bald, an extremely nice section of trail that had mild inclines, much different than the section of trail Session Two covered. 

On the first workday, the crew completed about 2-miles of brushing and clearing drains and waterbars under a sunny sky! 

That evening, Chloë, as she had to hike up a volunteer who joined us late, and Morgan, the RidgeRunner, joined us, a bright spot in our evening as it started to rain. It drizzled on and off overnight, kindly waiting to soak us around 9:00 the next morning and continued raining for most of the day. Though Sarah E. and Sarah F. were able to get a fire started in the shelter, where a couple people hung their socks up! Luckily, that was most of the rain, save for a passing shower around dinnertime the next evening. The rest of the workweek went great; the crew saw dry, partly cloudy, days and a lot of work being completed. 

We finished our section around lunch on the third workday and were able to start working on bonus projects, hence the Bonus Crew. Overall the crew completed 5.5-miles of brushing and cutting back woody growth, 232 cleaned waterbars, 9 new drains were installed, and 2,558 feet of tread was redefined (rehinging the trail where it had begun to creep down the mountain and taking the berm off the outside of the trail so water can run off)! Thank you Session 3 for the great work!