A perfect day for trail building!

Today's turn out was much less than expected, which was disappointing, yet we were still able to get quite a bit of benching done in the phase I section of the trail. Total turn out was six people, three from the mountain biking community and three from NBLA. The mountain bikers consisted of Paula Burton, Rich Coffey and myself. The NBLA participants were Cindy Miller, Dee Davis, and Robin Thomson.

The bugs weren't that bad this time around. I think what helped, at least for me, was to wear a wide brimmed hat covered in copious amounts of bug spray. I found this spray from CVS which smells like latex paint that seems to work pretty well. Also adding to the favorable buggy situation was the weather. It was a chilly 50 degrees this morning with a slight wind. Later towards noon, when it had warmed up even more, the bugs came out in full force.

Rich and I started working on the benching that I started last week and we were able to get it done in about an hour. During that time, a photographer for the Danbury Newstimes showed up and took some pictures of us working. Meanwhile, Paula and Dee were working on the opposite side of where we were also benching and clearing some of the downed trees across the trail.




Just as we finished that benching section a reporter from the Newstimes showed up. I escorted the reporter up and down the trail telling him about the history of the trail and it's intended use. He interviewed Robin, Cindy and Dee (shown below), and later Paula, too. It will be interesting to read how it comes out.

Afterwards we gathered for a group shot after wrapping things up. Despite the low turnout, we go a lot of work down. Rich bought his bike and was going to try doing a loop that including riding the forest road and the Upper Gussy Trail but I haven't heard back from him on whether he was able to find the end from the fire road or not.

To give you some perspective on what it looked liked before and after, here is what the new benched section of the trail, that starts after you make the dogleg turn off the ROW, looked like three months ago:

Here are the blow downs two months ago after Tom came through with his chainsaw.

This is what it looks like today - a trail! Might try to use some of the cut logs as a log ride along this section at a later date.

This is from the other direction.

Below is from the vantage point of just past where the tree was blocking the route.

The Upper Gussy is really starting to look like a trail!