July 2021 | "For the first week of the hitch, the crew got to know each other quickly. Our worksite was about 30 minutes away and the biggest project we did was shoring up the banks along a creek with large rocks. We pulled out debris from an old bridge, covered a couple of social trails, moved firewood, and cleared the corridor. It was one of the harder but more satisfying weeks. I think all the work is what got our crew close so quickly." -Tara Henderson

"The second week we started the trail behind our campsite and worked hard at it. We did tread work for quite a while, and eventually drained a mud pit. We lost a member that week, but they came back after the weekend in tip-top shape." -Toby Sanchez

"The main project of week three was reconstructing a section of trail that had been washed out by a spring. First, the corridor was cleared of logs and overhanging branches. Next, we planned out a French drain to reroute water off the trail. Then was the mud work. Of all the work we had done in past weeks, mud work had to be the most demoralizing. We were ankle-deep in mud and water that did the exact opposite of what we tried to tell it to do. However, we made an interesting find in the muck of what is believed to be the former drain placed there almost a hundred years ago. At last, the time came to move and crush rocks. This raises our spirits to the point where the drain was completed and the trail was repaired." - Andrew Monnat

"For the last week of the hitch, we did a lot of tread work and corridor clearing on a section of the Bartram Trail by the Nantahala Lake. The biggest project we did was create a switchback around a ton of fallen brush. We had to make a couple of rock steps and renaturalize the old trail. Because it was the last week, we also had to do the final derig. It’s cool to look back on what all we have done, but that also makes it harder to leave this crew." -Tara Henderson

Crew #986