Every time I step foot on a trail, I think of Felix.

Felix Metzner is an 84-year-old who maintains trails in the mountains. He hauls a 10-pound axe and fire rake into craggy backcountry and spends eight back-breaking hours a day clearing trails.

He’s not alone, either. Carolina Mountain Club’s trail maintenance team includes 20 senior citizens who maintain hundreds of miles of mountain trails. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, they caravan to a remote trail destination and spend the day chopping roots, building bridges, and stabilizing footpaths. They do the dirty work that most of us hikers take for granted.

“Many hikers assume trails maintain themselves, or that the Forest Service takes care of them,” says CMC trail team leader Misha Lazer. “In fact, it’s a bunch of old volunteers lugging wooden axes that keep most of the trails clear.”

The Carolina Mountain Club maintains over 200 miles of trails in Western North Carolina, including 95 miles of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail and 92 miles of the Appalachian Trail. They’ve also constructed new footpaths at the North Carolina Arboretum, the Carl Sandburg home, and Gorges State Park. They work year-round, in rain and snow, and get no compensation for their work other than an occasional thanks from a passing hiker.

But for volunteers like Misha and Felix, the real rewards of their work are the comraderie and friendships that develop out on the trail. That, and the required ice cream stop on the way home.

Today, I’m helping the CMC trail team repair an eroded section of the Appalachian Trail near Max Patch — a 2,350-acre grassy mountain bald overlooking the Smokies. After 20 minutes of bushwhacking through brambles and sliding down leafy slopes, we arrive at the AT.

Misha has tied pink surveying ribbons along the trail to indicate places that need repair. Earlier this week, the trail team carried in heavy chainsaws to clear blowdown — dead trees that had fallen across the trail in a windstorm. They used some of the blowdown stumps to build footbridges across nearby streams.

“Every log across a creek, every erosion bar along a trail, every stepping stone in a stream bed was placed there by volunteers like us,” explains Misha between swings of his pulaski — a long-handled axe with a mattock opposite the blade. He digs into the trail bank using the mattock, then chops away roots with the axe.

I’m assigned a narrow shelf of trail curling along a ridge. Runoff has almost completely eroded the outside of the trail, making it too dangerous for hikers to pass, so I start cutting into the shelf with my pulaski to widen the trail to the standard 3-foot width. It’s hard work, and I’m thick with sweat after only a few swings.

Nearby, Felix and another volunteer are girding a washed-out section of trail. They use cribbing — locust limbs and other fallen forest wood — to brace the trail shelf from below. The cribbing catches soil runoff and holds the trail in place. Afterwards, he and another volunteer pack rocks firmly around the cribbing.

No one will notice their work — and they want to keep it that way. Felix sprinkles leaves and dirt over their repairs, so that the trail appears undisturbed. Whenever possible, the trail team uses fallen trees from the forest to build stiles and runoff channels. They embed silt bars into the contours of the trail to reduce runoff. Their goal is always to preserve the natural appearance and function of trails.

It’s taken me two hours to widen a 10-foot section of trail. Sweat sticks to me like oil. I listen to Misha and a retired meteorologist named Lou recall last week’s work, which involved lugging 40-pound hoists and winches on their backs for over a mile. The week before, they relocated an overflowing outhouse at an AT shelter.

Why are these retirees out here carrying waste buckets and winches, I wonder, when they could be home sipping tea and watching soaps?

For the rest of the morning, Felix and I team up on a particularly rooty section of trail; he lifts the roots with his axe, and I snip them using scissor-like loppers. Felix’s hands are calloused and rough. They tremble slightly. But he pries roots from the ground quicker than I cut them, and he’s not even breathing hard.

In the afternoon, I hike up Max Patch with Dewayne Stutzman, who is section leader for six miles of trail stretching from the Max Patch summit to Roaring Fork shelter. For 30 years, Dewayne’s family has maintained this section of the AT. Dewayne’s father-in-law actually cleared the original trail, and for the past 30 years, Dewane and his family have hiked it back-and-forth, week after week. He knows every rock and runnel on the trail, and he cares for it like his own backyard.

Dewayne’s Max Patch section is one of the most heavily used portions of the AT in North Carolina. Last month, Dewayne hauled 46 bags of garbage from the Roaring Fork shelter. On our hike up Max Patch, he and another volunteer replace stolen trail markers and discuss how to repair the popular summit trail, which has deteriorated into a deep, dusty rut. But he doesn’t seem discouraged by the months of work ahead of him.

When we reach the top, I understand why. 360-degree views of rugged, rolling mountains surround us. An involuntary ‘wow’ falls out of my mouth. Dewayne just smiles.

Later that day, licking a double scoop of mint chocolate chip, I also begin to understand why these old-timers keep coming back to toil on the trails. It’s great exercise, and there’s definitely something therapeutic about slicing an axe cleanly through a stubborn root. Best of all, trail work allows farmers and physicians, octogenarians and 20-somethings, to work side-by-side in the great outdoors.

I see trails differently now. I pay attention to erosion contours and washouts. I notice cribbing underfoot, silt bars showing through the soil, notched logs spanning a stream. And I can’t help but think about the trembling, time-worn hands that put them all in place.

(Will Harlan writes about the outdoors for The Smoky Mountain News. Readers can contact him about story ideas at wharlan@hotmail.com)

 

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