Tellico Work Weekend Report

March 10 - 12, 2006

by Stefan Roth, Adrienne Hall, Sean McLeod, Rob Theurer, Roger Theurer, and Wayne Kickles
Photos by Stefan Roth, Rob Theurer and Herndon Elliott

Volunteers from Southern Four Wheel Drive Association work a long weekend maintaining the trails of Upper Tellico OHV Area.

Members of Southern Four Wheel Drive Association recently volunteered to maintain 4-wheel drive trails in the Nantahala National Forest.

The volunteers first finished the guard rail in the new parking lot located near state line at the beginning of trail 6. This large parking lot, suitable for trailers, is now open. The last 40 foot section of guard rail was installed and welded in place (read about the full guard rail installation in October 2005).

Later, the members installed 140 feet of guard rail on the upper section of trail 9 to help prevent illegal bypasses and off-trail driving.

The work crew also hauled four loads of rip-rap to the large mud holes on trail 8. The mud holes were drained and filled in and rip rapped to prevent them from coming back.

First, Gunnar Byrd, Griff Shirley, Greg Hall, and Roger and Rob Theurer loaded the pipes, to be used to build a guard rail, onto our new pipe trailer.

Driving the 5-ton Army truck on the trails to the work site is a long and tedious process. These stones (called rip rap) are used as trail or slope protection.

One crew worked on Trail 8 to close a big mud hole that had opened up recently. With the rains, water seepage on a section of the trail had softened that trail surface. With Southern's backhoe, 3 chainsaws, and the 5-ton Army truck, our members hardened the base and filled in the hole with the gravel they had brought in on Southern's Army truck.

Both crews worked full days, starting around 8am and getting out just after dark.

While the work weekend was officially on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Rob Theurer spent seven hours on Thursday driving the back hoe to the work site and then walking out. Even before Thursday, Rob and stepson Dillon put in several hours eariler in the week hauling in fuel and fueling equipment.

The second work crew installed a pipe fence at the top of Trail 9 to prevent spider-webbing of the trail. They used Gunnar Byrd's Ford work truck, a pipe trailer, as well as a welder, auger, and grinder to dig the post holes, drive the fence posts, and weld the railings in place.	Cutting the pipe with an acetylene torch mounted on a work truck.
Members used an electric grinder to smooth out the top of the fence posts so the railings can be welded on.
Laying out the pipe segments during construction of the fence near the top of trail 9.
Our 4WD back that we use for trail maintenance projects.
The finished fence runs along sections of the trail to keep vehicles from going off the trail into the woods.

Our members had planned to install a large silt pond on the lower side of trail 8, where lower part of trail 9 ties into trail 8, but they ran out of machine time to get this done. We will return to get this done as soon as possible.

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