At the start of the season, I began my work on the trail by completing trail assessments along the Saddleback Spur and from the Cascade Stream Gorge trailhead to City Pond to document locations where maintenance efforts should be directed in the future.

I cleared all blowdowns within the Cascade Stream section to City Pond and cleared the corridor of overgrowth. Additionally, I brushed in social trails within Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust’s portion of Cascade Stream and also routinely cleared the grassy section at the junction with the emergency access trail with a weedeater.

Throughout two separate outings, Brent and I cleared blowdowns and lopped overgrowth starting from half a mile east of the junction with the Berry Picker’s Trail to Reeds Mill Road. This portion of the trail had many blowdowns and debris from the flooding event back in December of 2023.

Down in Phillips, at the .85 mile section of single-track hiking trail adjacent to the Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes Railroad, I cleared all blowdowns and widened the corridor with a weedeater and loppers. Due to the trail’s proximity to the Sandy River, there is an extensive amount of flooding debris where water reached above my head last December. Much of the vegetation along the trail includes ostrich ferns and poison ivy which had to be trimmed back several times this season.

I consolidated all of the non-natural debris from the December flooding I could find.

• Bob Greene, section maintainer of the Saddleback Spur, made three solo outings onto the trail to clear blowdowns after significant wind events. On August 10th, Bob led a group of six volunteers carrying in planks to build bog bridging near Rock Pond. The volunteers also helped construct the bridge and weed-eat the grassy section at the beginning of the trail. One day while opening the log book box at the kiosk, Bob was stung by yellow jackets and removed the nest from the box, keeping future hikers from suffering the same fate.
• Nini Christensen, another dedicated volunteer, took a young group of outdoor enthusiasts out on the trail with loppers to cut back overgrowth within the corridor. 
• Carl Hardy and his wife made six visits during the summer and early autumn to his section spanning from the confluence of Perham Stream and Orbeton Stream to the Reeds Mill Loop. Their time was spent cutting back tall grass and brambles and sticking tipped-over blazed posts back in the ground. 
• Ben Godsoe, maintainer of the section from the Hardy Stream cutoff to the confluence of Orebeton and Perham Stream, completed two trips to his section, one in January and one in November. He described the scene in January as a “horror show” after blowdowns and debris deposited by the December flooding consolidated into walls of logs across several portions of the trail. On both visits, he cleared back overgrowth within the corridor with loppers. 
• Adam O’Neal hiked from the Saddleback Spur to the Reeds Mill loop to document trail conditions earlier this summer. However, he was unable to perform maintenance on his section from Cascade Gorge to City Pond due to a wood splitter accident that claimed part of one of his fingers. 
• Sam Shirley was able to visit his section, Berry Picker’s Trail to Horse Hobbles, on October 28th with the help of Lloyd and his ATV. Sam reported no blowdowns too big to handle with small hand tools and that the trail was in pretty good shape except for a few wet spots. 
• Anna Plog, a maintainer of the Reeds Mill Loop, is busy with family and finishing up a degree at UMF but has requested to be kept in the loop on future volunteer outings. 
• On December 4th, I was joined by John Rogers and Paul Kennedy at the Sandy River section in Phillips to haul out the debris from the flooding that I had consolidated into two piles. Fortunately, the snow wasn’t deep enough to require excessive post-holing.