Week 5

We did it! We kicked out the south/east side of the boundary this week. So it is completed and ready for a corridor monitor all the way from Maine to Gentian Pond! Our goal for this project this year was to get all of the boundary on both sides of the corridor from Maine to Gentian Pond cleared, painted, signed, and ready for a volunteer. With just the north/west side left, it's looking like we're going to get all of that done! (knock on wood)

Part of the goal of this project was to get these sections of boundary ready for a corridor monitor. As we've shown on previous posts, having a corridor monitor makes a huge difference in the condition of the boundary.

Therefore, we spent one day this week taking out blow downs on a section of boundary near Success Pond Trail in order to make it more accessible for a monitor. It was a really fun day. I'm sure ya'll have seen plenty of pictures of us painting, clearing, and swamping. So, imagine how we feel some days. Sometimes, you've just got to change it up a bit . . . so on this particular day we went out with a couple of axes (including the one Ray found on the boundary) and cleared blow downs.

Another very exciting part of this week is that we came down from the spruce/fir trees and into the hardwoods. Since these areas are not nearly as dense, we got to spend a couple of days without the clearing saws working with handtools and painting.

Through these areas, we were recovering 4 monuments a day, as opposed to only 1 in the denser spruce/fir areas. Here's Sally taking notes on the maps since we were making such progress:

Here's us moving the saw and our tools forward as we didn't need the saw through this section:

Here's how beautiful a hardwood boundary looks (after it's been painted):

Sally getting into some clearing action:

Getting in touch with our artistic sides:

Hanging on while hanging signs:

At the end of the day we we're a little too tired to stand up but never too tired to laugh!