Trail Maintenance

For today's Sunday activity I volunteered to be on the trail maintenance crew.  The maintenance crew is a small team of maybe 30 volunteers that get together ever so often to clear the ice and snow on some of the more popular trails around McMurdo.  In addition to shoveling pathways sometimes it is also necessary to replace flags, add signs, trail markers, etc. 

Today my group was in charge of the trail maintenance on the back side of Observation Hill here in McMurdo.  We were divided up into a group of about 15 people and were issued shovels, tools, etc. and we headed up the mountain.  Today was a bit windy, but all in all was a nice day for a hike, and it only took us about 20 minutes to get up to the area we were working on.  Because some of the trails around town get traveled on quite a bit, they tend to get packed down with hard ice and snow and can be pretty slippery and dangerous if not maintained, especially in the steeper areas

So we formed an assembly line and everyone chipped and dug away at the trails for a couple of hours.  The temperature was probably around +10F with the wind-chill, but it was pretty physical work and with all the moving around it was easy to stay warm.  From what they say, a little later in the year when some of the sea ice breaks up a bit, the trail we were working on makes for a good place to whale watch, and occasionally you can see killer whales swimming by.  So a little later in the year I will have to check it out and see if I can get lucky enough to see some wildlife.

So after a couple of hours we had pretty much cleared a safe path around the back side of Ob Hill and called it a day.  A lot of physical work, but all in all it was nice just to get out and check out the area….