I have volunteered doing trail maintenance along a busy stretch of the Appalachian Trail in Maryland at Pine Knob (US-40 aka Annapolis Rocks). The AT crosses over the I-70 Freeway here on a foot bridge. Last spring I removed about 9 inches of mud from the bridge that had settled back about 50 feet. It was a major task and took about 5 hours.  Yes, mud is part of regular life on the AT but it seemed to me that a long stretching sloppy muddy mess on a 6 foot wide fenced in cement foot bridge with no other place to walk ought to be avoided for safety reasons.

Since then I’ve implemented a number of measures to prevent the water and mud from flowing down there in the first place including waterbars on the Blue Blazed access trail from the parking area and on the AT along the safety fence next to the freeway. I’ve effectively stopped the water from the access trail yet even with a water bar about 75 feet uphill from the bridge on the AT, water and mud are still making it there.

I put a little bit of gravel down on this section last June to harden up the surface.  The stone sorta just sat there since we really didn’t have any soaking rains. Once it got wet this fall though, the little bit of stone laughed at my effort and vanished into the tread with no trace at all.

Garbology? Where is that in this Article?

So I brought up a little more stone to fix this problem and each time I walked back for another sack of stone, I picked up some of the litter around the trail. This is just some of the trash I picked up. I took out about 3 times that much just from this short 600 foot section of Blue Access trail. Please take your trash with you.  Leave No Trace. It may seems sometimes that you are all alone yet, someone is nearby and will see where you’ve been very soon. Thanks.