The Valley

Last week, two days of our training were to take place in Canaan Valley, which is known for its ski areas. Since Canaan is about an hour away and we were going to have to be there for two days anyway, a couple of us got the idea to camp out up there. In the end, it was about 12 of us who stayed the night.

The first day in Canaan began at the Canaan Valley State Park, where we took a guided naturalist walk to learn more about the ecology of the area. Although it was only about a two mile hike, it took us about two hours; there was a lot of stopping and talking and discussions about everything. In the afternoon we learned about wilderness surveys that we will be doing. In the National Forest there are wilderness areas that are trying to meet certain specifications. Some of us will be surveying those to see what the impact of people using the wilderness areas is. We went to the Otter Creek Wilderness Area and hiked in to see if we could find campsites. Sometimes we are just going to survey the area and record what the area looks like, if it is too close to the path or water source, what kind of damage has been done to vegetation, etc. We found three campsites, all which didn't meet the guidelines. But apparently this is common for campsites that are close to the trailheads where people arn't really concerned with being in the wilderness and arn't familiar with 'leave no trace' practices.

After we were done, we got to the campsite. It was down a long, dusty road on Canaan Valley Institute land, right by the Blackwater River. Although apparently where we were was downstream from a power plant because the water did not look very appealing at all. We set up camp and had more tents than people, so I didn't get a chance to use my new tent.

The next day I really felt like I was part of a government work program like the CCC. We spent the day trail building for CVI. Ken, the land manager, is an expert trail builder and gave us an overview of some concepts of sustainable train building. Our job was to help build some switchback turns on a trail that was being converted from a partial old logging trail to a hiking and mountain biking trail. It was amazing to start with something that wasn't a sustainable trail at all, work really hard for the afternoon and come up with a tangible, visible difference that we had made. As my first hands-on work project, it was a lot of fun.