Today we did some trail maintenance at Powell Butte. Hard work, that trail maintenance! There was no rain this morning and it was a pleasant, cool temperature, the difficulty came when we had to stop hiking (fun) and start working (hard). Still we did well I think, scraping organic material off the trails to keep them from getting mucky with future rains. The idea is that as trails become mucky, trail users walk around the wet spots, making the trails larger and damaging the areas around the trail. If we do our work, the trail stays well drained and nicely packed and hikers have no reason to venture off the path. The most fun task was gathering logs and sticks and brush and laying them in the curve of switch-backs to shrink the size of the curves - no shortcuts! It was nice to explore Powell Butte and to think a bit about the science and art of trail making.
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