by Aaron Rourke
August 2015
July rainstorms brought out the best in FLMSP volunteers as we saw a concentration of attention on our trail like no other time since Hurricane Ike passed through several years ago.
Hotline calls started coming in on July 15 before 8 a.m. from, in order from south to north, the Terrace Park, Loveland, Morrow – a real show-stopper there - and Fort Ancient areas. One trail user witnessed a tree fall right across the trail in front of her. It’s become routine for us to have reports of falling trees up to about three days after saturating rains, as trees lose their grip and topple.
In short order, FLMSP adopters and chainsaw crews swung into action. Some, like Paul Morgan, were already out on the trail when I called them, having anticipated problems. They were going hand-to-hand with the opponent when I called, or when they called me. I routinely found myself talking to volunteers who had both hands busy and the phone pinched between jaw and shoulder.
ODNR park manager Nathan Steiner released stalwart employee Rusty Cain, who has been working on our trail since it was made of gravel and railroad ties, for chainsaw work to assist with the Morrow blockage. Eventually Nathan, too, joined the fray.
Dirk Morgan was up to his waist in alligators at his campground, with a power outage and so many trees down on Gilmore Road that he had to drive overland from his home to go to work. He, too, headed out on the trail and did his part, and more. In fact, he took five of his employees with him. After they cleared a fallen tree that created a dense wall-to-wall blockage across the trail, he hooked up his landscape rake and groomed the trail for several miles.
The status of the northern section of trail was largely unknown early on, but then Greene County Parks & Trails volunteered to send a ranger down from Hedges to Corwin. Within an hour he reported six trees across the trail and lots of second-ranking problems.
Bayard Liesch took the hand-off in the north once this report came in. He gamely got to work with hand tools because the northern chainsaw was inaccessible. Soon Dennis Lewis started communicating his progress from the far northern end of our trail. “We had one large and two small trees down plus lots of branches,” he reported. Not long after that, Nathan finished what he was doing in the middle section of the trail and headed north to assist Bayard. It wasn’t until after 8 p.m. that Bayard called to give the “all clear.”
That was about the time the second shift was coming on, in the form of Dan Stacy and the towed blower. All day long, reports from the trail had included descriptions of a pervasive debris scatter. Bayard said he had never seen conditions as bad in his five years of trail maintenance work. Early on, therefore, Don Mills began organizing (while on vacation in an undisclosed remote location) an emergency trail cleaning. He hadn’t had to mobilize his blower team since last fall, but Dan Stacy agreed, on a moment’s notice, to do what he could. He went to Morrow from his home in Springboro and retrieved the blower, then took it out on the trail and drove for miles to the north and the south. At 11:30 p.m., sixteen hours after the first damage reports, Dan reported in: “Trail is blown off from Hedges Road to Loveland. It was not bad between the cartridge factory and Loveland. From Oregonia north it was as bad as I have seen it. The blower did a nice job; 90 percent of the debris is cleared off.”
The next day (July 16) I was on the trail to place some safety cones when I encountered a cyclist. He told me that 48 hours earlier, he would not have believed the trail could look so good.
The following morning, 230 riders rode our trail as part of the Greene County Cycling Classic. Race organizer Chuck Frazier said, “The Century ride to Miamiville is our most popular ride for those wanting to ride 100 miles. Several people from out of state come to our area to ride our two sections to get their Century ride in, due to the scenic view , flat trails and tree cover.”
We owe a great debt to all the FLMSP volunteers whose rapid response and hard work allowed our trail to shine in its showcase role.
