Alumni Crew

This session of Rocky Top consisted of mostly volunteers who were returning crew members – three, Logan, Constantin, and Jan, had been on crew the prior week and another, Shane, an alum who was back at Rocky Top for his third season. Randy, a Smoky Mountain Hiking Club member and former S.W.E.A.T. crew volunteer, joined Rocky Top for the first time, but rounded out the crew with his prior years of trail maintenance experience.

Good weather and speedy hiking saw the crew reach their campsite right around lunchtime. Climbing up Snake Den Ridge trail to the A.T. – around six miles and 3,500 feet of elevation gain – all in one morning was quite the feat! The crew had plenty of time to get camp ready and to do a tool and safety demonstration before the day was done.

On the crew’s second day, they worked on log steps and replaced an old softwood waterbar with a locust log. Christine Hoyer, the park’s backcountry specialist, came out today to work with the crew. All together, the crew was able to finish eight log steps, putting them on track for an impressive amount of completed work for the week.

Two volunteers with the Backcountry Horsemen of North Carolina brought up the resupply of food for the week today as well. A third of the crew went back to help unload and pack away the goodies in camp. Thanks BHNC for the resupply!

With the rain barrels almost empty, the crew hoped for rain to come over the next several days. The rain surely would come – more so than the crew could have expected.

The crew’s third day was a complete rain-out. With high winds, low temps, and constant rain, the crew avoided potential hypothermia and stayed in camp, making sure their rain barrels were in the best position to catch as much water as possible.

The group told stories, read, and filtered water. The rain never seemed to let up.

Thankfully, the crew’s water reserves were overflowing, allowing that concern to finally be laid to rest. The crew went to sleep anxious to get back to work on the trail. Hopefully the morning would bring better weather and a chance to get active again.

The next day the crew got back to business. While it was still quite windy, the rain had seemed to let up. The crew continued to install log steps southward back to Old Black. The group put in seven steps and made crush and fill to harden a wet area of the trail being held up by old CCC crib wall.

Day five the crew worked on another turnpike – the fourth of the season! This structure was needed near Deer Creek Gap where session one’s turnpike had been installed. A new muddy spot had developed since early September and it was time to help lift the trail up out of the muck with logs and rock.

The view from the gap was sporadically sunny, with clouds whipping overhead and bouts of mist coming and going. Still, the weather held up and it was another successful day of work. Towards the end of the day, turnpike finished, the crew continued south and began work on three more log steps before heading back to camp.

Seven more log steps were completed the next day, even with some rainfall coming and going. The crew worked quickly with skill and determination. By this point all of its individual members were old hands at installing steps, but they also knew that the next two days were expected to be heavy with rainfall.

The second-to-last day, the crew decided to come out early. Amidst the cold rain, the only work the crew was able to accomplish was cleaning a few drainages north of Deer Creek Gap. The rain was good for one thing – seeing how water traveled down the trail and where drainages were working or not working. By mid-morning, the rainfall was so bad that the crew was already heading down Snake Den Ridge Trail, done for the week.

Thanks session three for a great week of work, despite the wet and cold weather! Special thanks to Jan and Constantin for their two weeks of crew work and thank you Christine Hoyer as well for coming out to lend a hand!

The European Crew

Session Two Crew

Day 1: Session Two of the 2015 season, in contrast to the prior session, was filled to the brim with volunteers! Eleven volunteers, most of them hailing from across the Atlantic, joined the crew in the backcountry helping to build new trail structures.

Day One of the session saw the U.K.-hailing Essex Boys and Girls Club members – Lauren, Amber, Ellie, Luke, Callum, and Simon – their two expedition leaders, Graham and Juliet, a young man from Germany, Constantin, a 2015 thru-hiker from Ohio, Jan, and a young man from North Carolina who had hiked through the Smokies on the A.T., Logan, all hike up Snake Den Ridge Trail to the Rocky Top camp near Inadu Knob. With all of their hiking experience (the Essex group had hiked through the Smokies as well the week prior) the group tackled this challenge with ease.

The crew opened up camp for full operation once they arrived, putting tents up, replacing the bear fence battery, digging a new privy (a quite large one for the big group size), and getting dishware out for the ensuing dinner. With a total of thirteen people on crew, counting the two crew leaders, Rocky Top camp was abuzz with activity, a veritable hive of preparation.

 

Day 2:  The crew began the work week with building two turnpikes – a raised walkway made of logs and rock in order to allow for traversal over poorly-draining, muddy areas. Each turnpike was over twenty feet long with over eight cubic feet of crush. After the first turnpike was done, crew members began working on waterbars and drains. The crew worked through intermittent rain and cool weather, but stayed warm by swinging picks and hammers.

Three volunteers with the Smoky Mountain Trail Riders brought up a food and propane resupply for the crew. A few crew volunteers took time during the afternoon to help unload and store the supplies at camp.

Later that day crew began the trend of playing the card game Werewolf each evening to pass the time. In their downtime, the crew also played charades and debated the pronunciation of certain words in the English vocabulary.

 

Day 3: The crew finished off the second turnpike and began in earnest to install more waterbars back towards camp. The crew worked on a number of log waterbars, worked on a stone waterbar and stone step where a natural seep was discovered, and towards the end of the day, began working south again towards Old Black. This second sweep of the 1.5-mile goal would include putting in log steps where large drop-offs occurred or where the trail was so badly cupped, the water had to be slowed down.

Day 4: Day Four saw the crew well into their new agenda of step-building, working steadily in the drier and warmer weather. A few of the crew began a rock cribbing and step project, adding in three rock steps and adding a number of new tiers to original cribbing below the trail to hold in all the crush and fill.

A few of the crew began another trend for this week – going out to the eastern face of Inadu Knob to watch the sunrise each clear morning. A mainstay hobby for Rocky Toppers over the last couple of years, this week’s sunrises offered vibrant colors over North Carolina.

Day 5 through Day 8: The crew continued to work on the rock crib project and on installing more wood steps towards Old Black. By the end of the work week, the crew had also began and finished a wood cribbing and step project in order to get over a number of rock fins protruding into the trail.

The European Crew finished with one of the strongest showings of total trail work ever done at Rocky Top.

A proper big thanks goes out to the Essex Boys and Girls Club – Graham, Juliet, Amber, Ellie, Lauren, Luke, Callum and Simon – and to Constantin, Jan, and Logan for one of the hungriest, most hilarious, and most industrial crews we’ve ever seen!

Rocky Top looks forward to welcoming the Essex group back again next year for more trail work. Stay classy!

The Great Pack-In and the Three Trail Musketeers!

Session One Crew

Day Zero & Day One

Day one of the first Rocky Top crew session of the season was actually the second day of the “Great Pack-In,” an event where various horsemen packers contribute to getting Rocky Top’s tools, gear and food up to the crew’s campsite near the Appalachian Trail and Snake Den Ridge Trail intersection in the park. The day before, or “Day Zero,” a set of five horsemen packers took up roughly half the gear for the crew, with the remainder going up alongside the Rocky Top crew as they hiked up to the A.T. on day one of the session.

The participating volunteer groups for the Great Pack-In were the Southern Appalachian Backcountry Horsemen, the Backcountry Horsemen of North Carolina, and the Smoky Mountain Trail Riders – a total of ten volunteers helped carry all of Rocky Top’s tools and gear up for the season, as well as its food supplies for the first week. Thank you to everyone who volunteered for this first session!

The Rocky Top crew itself began with a very small crew – only one volunteer, Lenni, made it out for session one – but the crew would go on to more than make up for its size through its quality and quantity of completed work.

Pack horse at Cosby

 
For the trail crew, day one consisted of hiking up Snake Den Ridge Trail from Cosby Campground to the A.T. and then to Inadu Knob. All told, this hike is six miles long and gains over 3500 feet of elevation. With tents riding up on the horses, the crew had relatively light packs to carry up and was lucky enough to have perfect weather for the duration of the steep climb.

Once the crew of three – one volunteer, one crew leader, and one assistant crew leader – arrived at the top, they met with the horsemen who were letting their steeds rest before heading down. After a brief and thankful exchange, the crew got to work setting up camp – putting the food away in bear-proof containers, setting up a kitchen area, digging a trench privy, changing out the bear-fence battery (the crew leaders had set up an electric fence a few days earlier for Day Zero’s gear to hang out in), and setting up tents. The crew also noticed that their rain barrels were pretty much empty. There had been almost no rain the week prior.

Day one ended with the crew heading to bed, knowing tomorrow would mean a trip down to the spring on Snake Den, about a mile from camp. All were excited though for the beginning of a trail crew session and for kicking off the entire fall season.

Lenni digs for a waterbar

Day Two

The crew awoke to a cool and foggy morning and gathered all their water bottles, two 6-gallon jugs, and two freighter packs and headed down to the spring. While playing word games, the crew filled up all their bottles and both jugs, hoping to cut the number of spring-trips down to as few as possible if the next seven days decided to stay dry. Then the crew – now unofficially dubbed the “Three Musketeers” – managed the short but intense hike back to camp to begin filtering water. Once the three arrived at their destination, one thing was on each of their minds – water conservation for the week. “Let’s do that as few times as we need to,” someone offered.

Once enough water was filtered to fill personal bottles for the work day, the three set off to the top of Old Black, about a mile and a half south of camp. The project goal for the season would be to finish the trail work needed on this stretch of the A.T., beginning with priority needs first and foremost. With water-fetching having taken up most of the morning, the crew spent half a day installing water bars and grade dips. Near the end of the day, the three took assessment of the trail work needed along the way back to camp, marking priority needs with flagging as they went.

Installing a waterbar

Day Three

The Musketeers had their first full work day, stopping at Deer Creek Gap on the way to work in order to stretch and tell safety tips and jokes – a ritual they would do each work morning from thereon out. It was a clear and sunny work day. This was great for digging more water bars and grade dips, but poor for rain barrel reserves. The crew had a satisfying if not tiring day and headed back to camp where they played the card game “spades” after dinner, something they would come back to again later in the week.

View from deer Gap

Day Four

Today was the crew’s “hump day” since, at its end, they would have four more days left of their eight-day session. Chris, the Trail Specialist for the southern regional office of the ATC, joined the crew for some water bar-installation and came bearing a few of the biggest Fuji apples the crew had ever seen. Thanks Chris!

Chris camped out with the crew that night with the intent of hiking past Old Black in the morning, assessing the work for future years’ crews as he went. The crew played more word games to past the time and reveled at the addition of a fourth helping hand when it came time to do dishes.

Breaking rocks!

Day Five

Cloudy skies teased rain during the middle of the week, but alas, none was to be had. With Chris hiking out past Old Black for the day, the crew worked on putting in more water bars, grade dips, and some much-needed log steps. The Musketeers found this day one of the more exhausting.

Back in camp, it was a very early turn-in after dinner. By 7 PM the crew was back in their tents, listening for signs of rain. A pattering of rain drops began for about ten minutes, but then petered out. It was almost guaranteed now that the crew would need one more trip to the spring before they headed out.

Pounding stakes!

Day Six

Today the crew worked on a muddy area near Deer Creek Gap, installing about 20 feet of log turnpike. Once the logs were cut and more or less laid in place, the brunt of the work amounted to removing excess mud from the middle of the turnpike and finding enough rock to crush and fill in where the muddy path used to be. Locating and digging up rock, rotating to crushing that rock with sledge hammers, and then going off to find more rock was fun but exhausting work. The crew worked on the turnpike while enjoying the shade of a few trees, watching as Deer Creek Gap was lit up by rays of sunlight all day.

Back at camp and after dinner, the crew played more spades. This time they relaxed next to a nice camp fire, one they made especially for their backcountry location by building a dirt mound on top of a fire blanket and then adding their kindling on top of the mound. Knowing they would have to hike down to the spring again in the morning, the crew enjoyed the peaceful allure and warmth of the fire.

Day Seven

This was the day the Musketeers finished the turnpike! Before that though, the crew did another hike down to the spring, taking this time only the two 6-gallon jugs to fill for the last two days. The crew found this trip much more manageable.

After hours of work, the crew had finally crushed and filled enough rock to adequately harden the tread surface of the turnpike. Now hikers would have a mud-free area to walk. The 20-foot-plus section of turnpike would now encourage hiking straight through the trail, rather than around, mitigating any undesirable widening of the trail itself.

Christine Hoyer, the park’s Backcountry Management Specialist, came to join the crew later in the day. She worked with the crew on widening drainages north of Deer Creek Gap and taking off a built-up grassy berm on the downside edge of the trail. Berms build up over time on trails and trap any water from draining off its edge. “Knocking off the berm” helps encourage future water drainage off, rather than down, the trail.

Christine came back to camp with the crew to spend the night and hike out with the crew the next morning. The three took inventory of food and gear needed for the next week and began to prep the campsite for the crew’s off days.

... and after!

Before the turnpike...

Day Eight

The hike out! Camp is always abuzz the morning of day eight – people are excited to have finished a crew week and are looking forward to the return journey. The crew packed up all their belongings, put up tents and any remaining food supplies into rain- and bear-safe containers and, finally, replaced the bear fence battery and turned on the electric current for their days off.

Goodbye Rocky Top camp! See you on Session 2.

Thank you Chris and Christine for coming out to work with the crew this week! And a very special thank you to Lenni, our volunteer who took the weight of an entire crew on her shoulders and did so amazingly well! We hope to see on crew again. Go Three Musketeers!

Love the Smoky Mountains!

The Ultimate Post-Thru-Hike Reentry Program

Rocky Top Trail Crew members show their enthusiasm along the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smokies//Text by Leanna Joyner, Trail Resources manager

 

Near the end of a thru-hike, or just afterwards, there’s a flood of mixed emotions: pride, elation, and for some, there’s confusion about what comes next. The camaraderie, present-moment focus, the healthy physical exertion, and time outdoors doesn’t have to conclude when your hike finishes.

 

Several thru-hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail (A.T.) are already planning to join the Rocky Top Trail Crew once their hike ends. Rocky Top Trail Crew enables hikers to experience the Great Smoky Mountains from a different perspective by working and camping on the Trail during 8-day sessions.

 

Here are the top 10 reasons why a hitch on crew is the perfect transition into life after the trail.

10. Retrace part of your hike: The Smokies are beautiful, but early spring thru-hike starts often means missing the views and expansive perspective gained from some of the highest and most remote sections of the entire A.T. You’ll get to return to the Smokies in time to see the fall colors in their full effect in September and October and squeeze out the very last bit of good weather before the snow flies and puts the Trail to bed for the winter.

9. Camaraderie: Live and work with the salt of the earth. Whether reuniting with Trail friends or other volunteers on the crew, you’ll forge the kind of memorable relationships that will last a long time.

8. “Repair the Rut”: If you ever found yourself frustrated with a trench of trail, this is your chance to make it better for those who come behind you. Be part of improving the type of trail conditions you were annoyed by the most.

7. Get a behind the scenes look at the management of the A.T.: The Trail doesn’t just exist. It’s constantly evolving and shifting, and it requires a host of management partners, from volunteers, to Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) staff, and land management agencies. Get a glimpse of how all the pieces and partners fit together by being a valuable piece of the puzzle to protect the A.T.

6. Learn new skills: By the end of your hike, you’ve stepped over, on, or around thousands of steps or waterbars. They are the corrective action for the number one enemy of the trail: water. These erosion control features repair entrenched trail by slowing the flow of water or by getting off the trail. Learn the “how” and the “why” behind these structures. You’ll know it well enough by the end that you can teach someone else.

5. Continue your outdoor experience: If your experience hiking this year makes you feel like you may only ever want to live and work in the backcountry, trail crew provides a great job skill training opportunity and resume builder. Add conservation, natural resource protection, and teamwork to your skill set as you ease your way back into the workforce.

4. Get all you can eat without tacking on those post-trail pounds: Keep your trail physique and gain upper body strength and conditioning while enjoying all the food you can eat. Did we mention you don’t even have to carry that food up the mountain to the backcountry site? Our equestrian volunteer and partners help us carry some of the heaviest equipment and supplies to the worksite on this rare horse-accessible portion of the A.T.

3. Put your worrying mind at ease: With your backpack on, your focus is solely on the trail ahead. On crew, you can focus just on the task at hand: crushing this rock, lopping this brush, or placing the most perfect stone step. With concerted focus, your mind releases unnecessary chatter and your body produces measurable results.

2. It feels good to give back: Altruism releases all kinds of fabulous feelings. Bring yourself and your contributions of sweat and effort to Rocky Top Trail Crew to leave a lasting impact. Plus, you’ll be delighted to plan a return visit long into the future.

1. Earn a free t-shirt: While no one on crew cares a bit if you’re stinky as you work alongside them in your hiking gear, at the end of your crew session, you’ll appreciate having a fresh t-shirt to slip on. You’ll walk away with a t-shirt in acknowledgement of your effort and making you as a great guardian of the A.T.

Our Friends from Across the Pond Help Rehab the A.T.in the Smokies

This session of Rocky Top Trail Crew had a definitive British flavor, as members of the Essex Boys and Girls Club came to volunteer in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in part to help develop their own young leaders. Two chaperones and five young men and women from the U.K., after having hiked through the Smokies the week prior, learned about sustainable structure building for trails and how to install such structures. Robert, a member of the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club and our lone volunteer from stateside, rounded out the crew for the week.

 

A tough section of trail that the previous week’s crew began to repair with log cribbing was finished this week, including some pinning of rocks to hold crush – man-made gravel used as a tread surfacing in order to encourage water percolation and erosion control. This bit of work required the use of rock drills and hammering in rebar to help lock the rocks in place. Later on in the week, the crew worked to lay crush over an area above old Civilian Conservation Corps crib wall, where a lack of sunlight and proper drainage over almost a century had left the trail quite soggy. Finally, the crew finished their week by completing 45 feet of locust log turnpike, a structure which raises the tread of a trail up out of a poor drainage area with the help of lots of crush and fill.

 

During time at camp, the crew played a variety of group games, including charades, and one night, the boys and girls from Essex successfully guessed all 50 U.S. states. The Americans on crew had a much harder time with guessing all 52 counties in the U.K. (they only got four or five). In the mornings, the crew enjoyed sunrises before leaving camp for the workday and, at the end of the day admired the orange glow of the sunsets upon the trees in camp.

Overall, the crew put in eleven log steps, one rock waterbar, one grade dip, the aforementioned turnpike, and over 128 cubic feet of crush and fill – an astounding amount of hand-made gravel for a single week. In the end the young leaders of the Essex Boys and Girls club, some of which are studying to be outdoor educators and guides, learned how to build sustainable trail and repair badly eroded aspects of the trail.

We here at Rocky Top Trail Crew hope to see our friends from across the pond make their volunteerism an annual venture and so look forward to their return next year!

Session 1: The Great Pack-In | First Trail Rehab of the Season

This year’s Rocky Top season in the Smokies began with a great set of volunteers, both on the trail work side and equestrians working to help us out on the horse pack-in side. On the day before the crew hiked in, members of the Backcountry Horsemen of Tennessee and North Carolina, including regional presidents Vetice Bates and Tom Thomas, brought over 300 lbs of trail tools and camping gear up to the crew’s campsite. The following day the crew hiked up Snake Den Ridge Trail, a six-mile hike gaining over 3,500 feet of elevation. More equestrian volunteers, this time from the Smoky Mountain Trail Riders, took up over 200 lbs of food and camp amenities for the crew’s first eight-day session.

The crew meets the day before their session heads into the field; the gathering at basecamp includes orientation, introductions, a safety talk, and a great dinner cooked by camp coordinator Chloe de Camara. She also prepares the crew’s camp food for the horse packers. The next morning the crew began their journey up Snake Den Ridge Trail from Cosby Campground.

 The crew carried all the gear they needed that hadn't been hauled earlier through the support of our horse partners. The volunteers the first week ranged widely in background and experience, coming together to create a well-rounded group for the crew. Jerry, a volunteer from Ohio, had spent years working in the state park system, including doing trail work. Sam, a volunteer from Virginia, had just finished a thru-hike of the trail and was ready to give back to the A.T. Having Sam's hiker appetite on crew meant there was never a scrap of food that wasn't fully enjoyed. 



The crew spent the next six days working near Inadu Knob doing major trail rehab. This included installing over twenty log and rock steps, a rock water bar, and removing a large portion of berm from the edge of the trail to allow water to shed downhill instead of being retained on the walking surface.





A particularly rooty part of the trail called for extensive log cribbing and log steps in order to control water erosion and to gain elevation over and protect larger roots. In another difficult section where bedrock created water-shedding issues, the crew constructed two tiers of rock cribbing and two rock steps in order to bring the trail over the exposed section of mountain. Throughout the duration of the week the crew of volunteers learned trail maintenance and rehab skills on-the-job and by the week’s end became very proficient trail rehabbers.

Thus Rocky Top week one ended with an impressive amount of trail work completed. However, the rest of the season in the Smokies this fall has only just begun!

To join a Rocky Top trail crew, visit appalachiantrail.org/crews

Rocky Top Takes to the Skies

In June, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, volunteers from the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club A.T. Maintenance Committee, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park were graced with mostly-clear skies for a helicopter delivery of supplies to the Rocky Top Crew work site for 2014. Locust logs are imported because they are the most rot-resistant wood and do not grow at the high elevation of the Appalachian Trail within the Park. 

The collaborative effort requires cooperation among club volunteers, park staff, ATC staff, and helicopter pilots to get the hard-as-a-rock locust to the right spots along the Trail. Set and ready for installation this year. 

The crew uses the locust to install waterbars and steps. 

Smoky Mountain Hiking Club A.T. Maintenance Committee volunteers Phyllis Henry and Stuart Taylor still smiling at the end of a long day of moving flight materials, coordination, and waiting around between flights. 

Rocky Top Trail Crew and the helicopter airlift operation are made possible with funding from a North Carolina Recreational Trails Program Grant.