ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 1, 1996 TAG: 9604040024
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY/STAFF WRITER
I'VE always liked footbridges in the woods. They make me think of trolls.
A few weeks back, in the waning days of winter, I helped build another of the bridges of Dismal Creek.
Now, that doesn't have quite the ring of the "Bridges of Madison County." And I can assure you the only things shaking that crisp Saturday were myself and four fellow members of the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club, in a daylong (and nightlong for three of them) struggle to stay warm.
Our mission: build one new bridge at the beginning of an Appalachian Trail relocation in Bland County's Lickskillet Hollow; and replace a 16-year-old, two-log bridge on Dismal Creek in Giles County with a safer, sturdier 16-foot span of pressure-treated lumber.
The first project, because of its location right on Virginia 608, was completed so quickly I almost didn't have time to warm up. Using 12-foot stringers and recycled decking, we placed and built the small span over a roadside drainage ditch in an hour or so. (The club opened the four-mile Brushy Mountain trail relocation, near Crandon, on March 24, eliminating a 1.7-mile road walk.)
But building the second bridge, far up the Dismal Creek watershed in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, took until nearly dusk.
First, we drove as far as an old fire road would take us, to an earthen barrier the Forest Service built about a year after it relocated the trail off the road in 1980. Then, we filled a ramshackle-looking but surprisingly sturdy two-wheeled cart with lumber. Charles Parry, the club's trail supervisor, and Roanoke dentist Jim Roberson designed and built the contraption a decade or so ago.
The first time I saw it, I chuckled. But the thing can haul some wood. With myself and Virginia Tech math professor Bill Floyd harnessed out front to a rope (many mule jokes were uttered) and Parry and Christiansburg teacher Mike Sowder on side handles, we pulled, guided and cajoled the load down the old road a half-mile or more. As someone put it, the cart was an excellent gravity detector.
Hal Cantrill, the club's land-management supervisor and a Salem engineer, carried a backpack of tools and a chain saw.
After an hour of epic struggle, we reached our destination: an old, deteriorating and slippery bridge over a channel of Dismal Creek, which the trail parallels and crosses several times in its journey northward toward Pearisburg.
In late 1994, the Roanoke club built four replacement bridges on the creek. This past month, club volunteers built two more on Dismal and the one at Lickskillet Hollow. Plans call for one more span over Dismal.
The bridge-building itself didn't take long. But getting all the materials there took three cart trips and one broken spoke. While we trail mules hauled, Cantrill cut locust footers for each side. Floyd skinned the locust logs with a forest firefighting tool called a Pulaski (we'd left the draw knife back at the truck).
Finally, with all the wood ready, we set to work positioning the stringers (the long pieces that serve as a base for the decking) atop the footers and attaching the railing.
Dusk approached as we finished the decking and gathered our tools. I went for a drink of water and found ice in my Nalgene bottle. I didn't put it there.
I couldn't make it out to the trail the next day, but the same crew, plus Sara Patterson, finished that bridge and built another closer to the road's end.
The club has financed the project with a $485 grant from the Appalachian Trail Conference. But it only has used $212 so far because many of the materials were salvaged from a washed-out Forest Service footbridge in Bland County and from a deck on a house demolished near Troutville, Parry said. The balance will go to future projects, including a bridge near the Laurel Creek Shelter in Craig County.
When you're out hiking, you might cross several bridges and not think about them at all. And that's sort of the point of most trail maintenance.
Think of the trolls living underneath them instead.
Brian Kelley is an assistant editor in The Roanoke Times' New River Valley bureau in Christiansburg. He is a volunteer trail maintainer with the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club and hiked the entire trail in 1991.
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: BRIAN KELLEY/Staff. 1. Charles Parry nails down anotherby CNBpiece of bridge decking. A Virginia Tech math professor, Parry is
trail superintendent for the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club. 2. At
upper left, Parry, Mike Sowder and Hal Cantrill position stringers
on the Dismal Creek Bridge, 3. which is almost finished in the
picture at left, in Giles County. color.