Appalachian Trail at Beechy Bottom
West Mountain, Harriman State Park, NY
New steps and more November 7, 8, 9 2014
We are the Long Distance Trails Crew from the NYNJ Trails Conference
We Rock Your Trail
This short video covers all 3 days. On Friday after determining just where we wanted the highline, 2 trees, one at each end of our work site, were selected to be used as spar trees. After determining which trees we were going to use, we set up a collapsible hunters ladder against the tree. The completed ladder is about 20’ in length. We assemble the ladder on the ground then lean it up against the tree. Someone climbs the ladder strapping it against the tree as they climb. Once at the top, they place a sling around the tree and attach a block to the sling for the highline wire to travel through. Because of unusual circumstances and wanting everything to be safe and strong, the first spar tree took almost 1 hour to complete. That’s a lot of time to be standing at the top of this very thin ladder. When finally everything on the first tree was finished, it was time to climb down the ladder unstrapping it as you went down. Then move the ladder to spar tree #2 and start the process again. These are heavy rocks we will be lifting so every time we use the highline and Griphoist, it takes careful placement to make sure it is up safely and securely. The highline is a strong cable stretched between two trees (spar trees) and anchored to another anchor tree at each end. The highline has to be installed in such a way that at it’s slackest, the middle of the highline wire reaches the ground. On one of the anchored ends, we attach the Griphoist. The Griphoist is the device that slacks or tensions the highline wire using only muscle power. After the highline rig is set up our system works like this. First we locate a rock we want to use and attach a sling around it and a belay line around the sling. Next we slacken the highline wire so it can get close to the rock with the sling, then we use a shackle to connect the sling to a block already on the highline wire. The block on the wire allows the rock to be easily moved along and into place. Then we call out to the Griphoist operator to “Tension Hoist” and the highline wire is pulled tight and the rock is lifted off the ground. Once we have it high enough off the ground to move it, we call out “Hold Hoist”, this stops the lifting process and the rock is then pulled along the wire using the belay line. Once the rock gets to where we want it, we call out “Slack Hoist” and the rock is lowered into place. This action is repeated over and over again for each rock we want moved. Many times the rock we want to use is a short distance off the trail and the highline wire, even fully slackened, doesn’t reach it. In those cases we had to add additional slings to the rock and then tension and slacken the wire several times until we got the rock into a position that we could lift it and move it into place. I have a lot of video of us moving and lifting rocks but I felt it was all too boring to watch. But it was great being there. One rock on the wire sure looks like any rock on the wire so I felt it was not necessary to show each rock moving along on the highline. I even had to speed up a few sections of the video to make them watchable.
Like most of the Appalachian Trail, it is always evolving and changing. Work crews, like LDTC, all along the AT constantly rehabilitate portions of the trail to protect nature and to enhance the Appalachian Trail hiking experience. This particular rehabilitation was requested because of an eroded and high traffic section of the AT on West Mountain.
As you can tell from the video, this project took a lot of effort and it was all done by volunteers.
Speaking of volunteers, not everyone could make it all three days and that’s OK with us. Some volunteers came for all 3 days but many could only make it 1 or 2. Don’t feel that you have to commit to the entire weekend, any help is appreciated and being a volunteer you can come and go as you see fit.
During this weekend work trip. the weather was not so perfect. Friday was cool and damp with sprinkles late in the day, Saturday cold, windy but sunny, Sunday started out cold but quickly warmed up to 55 degrees under abundant sunshine. All in all we had a great time.
I used 2 cameras on this project, a GoPro3 and a Sony HDR-PJ810 hand held camcorder.
As always, video was edited using Final Cut Pro 10.
If this looks like the kind of activity you want to be part of, contact us, we're a community of volunteers who build, protect and maintain hiking trails.
We invite you to join in. You’ll be glad you did.
Long Distance Trails Crew - We Rock your Trail
NYNJTC-LDTC.ORG - our website
[email protected] - our email
NYNJTC.org - Trail Conference website
NYNJTC - Connecting People with Nature since 1920
Thank You for watching.
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