Over the last few years, the scheduled workday has had to be cancelled due to too cold, rain, and on one occasion snow. Based on this history no workday was scheduled, however tool shed cleaning was scheduled. This year held true to form. The tool shed cleaning scheduled for Saturday, 1/10, was cancelled due to inclement weather. This has been rescheduled for Saturday, 1/31.
Kennesaw State University’s (KSU) Alliance of Sororities and Fraternities asked to perform a workday on the third Saturday, January 17th to celebrate MLK day. They were scheduled to fill in the horse step forms with GAB on the Hardage Mill Trail that Zoe and Issaic built the week leading up to the workday.
We had 8 crew leaders for the workday. The Crew Leaders were Aashrith, Bill, Curt, Eric, Fred, Kirsten, Rich, and me. We had an Ambassador; the Ambassador was Yvonne helping Amanda. They did registration and directed the volunteers to the parking area. We had 36 volunteers. The volunteers were from various KSU Sororities and Fraternities.
Amanda welcomed the volunteers and introduced me. I led the volunteers to the worksite, reviewed the workplan, did a safety brief, talked about Crew Leader Volunteer opportunities, and introduced Ladrick, Michael, and Norm. I then split the KSU volunteers into two groups.
Kirsten leading with Curt, and Aashrith assisting, led the first group (12) shoveling GAB into buckets and loading them into the two Gators.
Bill and Rich took the second group (24) to the worksite where they dumped the GAB into the forms, racked the GAB level, tapped the GAB down, and returned the buckets to the Gator.
Eric and Ladrick drove the two Gators taking the full buckets to the worksite and returning them to be refilled.
Fred took pictures and I bounced between the two groups, ensuring they were following the workplan and park procedures.
We moved over 5000 lbs. of GAB and filled two of the six forms. We started the third form, the largest. Thanks to Zoe and Issaic for the creation of the forms and Norm and Michael driving tools and Gators to and from the worksite. Because of this prep and assistant, we accomplished a lot.
Our next workday is Saturday, February 14th. We will perform cyclic maintenance on the back side of Little Kennesaw Mountain from the saddle of Pigeon Hill to the top of Little Kennesaw. The switchback needs to be repaired along with some of the stone steps. If we have extra time and volunteers we will deberm as needed. We will meet at the Pigeon Hill parking lot. This may change based on the needs of the park. Regardless we will still meet at the Pigeon Hill parking lot.
Mike Collett
Trails Director
