The WVAIA/Rey Center Trail Crew — Raye, Larisa, Jimmond and Tommy — flips a granite boulder. The rock will eventually be placed in the trail as a soil retainer (rock step). Have you ever wondered how those steps on White Mountain Trails get there? To see a video of the crew flipping and setting the rock, keep reading and click on the YouTube icon. (more…)
Above: Larisa, Sue, Brenda, Raye and Jimmond.
The 2008 WVAIA/Rey Center trail crew spent two days training on Franconia Ridge. Good weather helped us reach Greenleaf Hut Friday. By Saturday afternoon we were working at 5,000 feet in wind-driven rain. The crew managed to clear all the waterbars on the Upper Greenleaf Trail and repair scree wall between Mt. Lafayette and Mount Lincoln. On Sunday morning half the crew learned how to repair cairns from WETT sage Sue Demming while the others built rock steps with Nat.
The 2008 WVAIA/Rey Center crew consists of three Student Conservation Association interns — Larisa, Raye and Jimmond — and crew leader Tommy (arriving on Monday). Nat is training the crew, and perennial volunteer, Brenda, joins whenever she has time. During this special training session crew members were initiated into the West End 
Trail Tenders (W.E.T.T.). WETT is an informal gathering of volunteer trail workers started by Laura and Guy Waterman in the 1970’s to share in the care of Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) trails on the west side of the White Mountains, most notably the Franconia Ridge Trail. The WVAIA and the Rey Center are helping keep up this tradition. Trails are maintained through the AMC adopt-a-trail program.
In a happy cooincidence, we met Kim Votta at Greenleaf Hut on Sunday. Kim will be working with Chris Hilke on environmental monitoring and the Tecumseh overnight program. Chris is the Rey Center research coordinator and Kim is a graduate student at Plymouth State University’s (PSU) Center for the Environment (CFE). Kim’s graduate study is co-sponsered by the Rey Center and CFE.
Above: the 2007 Trail Crew: Nate, Raphael, Jack (crew leader), Justin, Karen (Welch Summit Steward), and volunteers extraordinaries, Brenda and Preston.
by Dan Newton
Ambling along the trail, I come across a group of enormous young men sitting in the dirt and rocks eating things like Bumble Bee tuna fish straight out of the can, and huge chunks of bread and giant 
plastic bowls of pasta. It’s Raphael, a rare woodland being from the city, philosophical, erudite, possessed of strange thoughts and an infectious laugh, able to read books at speeds unknown to mortal men; and Justin, tall, a little mangy, loved by sprites and fairies of the female persuasion throughout the enchanted forest; and Nate, tough as nails, quiet, with a legendary quality about him, dusted with the dirt of work and damn serious about it. Standing over them is Jack the crew leader. His bulging arms are folded in front of his prodigious pectoral muscles; and rocks, once strong and mighty looking, lay grappled and flattened on the ground beside him, whimpering for mercy.
