IIT Winter Newsletter - On the Trails
On the Trails - Bridge Woes by Dan Tutor
This can be a quiet time for visitors to the trails. The ground is often frozen and streams are glazed with ice. Some days the wind howls and bites, like it did last Monday when Chloe and I walked the sandbar out to Hutchins Island. When it blows especially hard, as it has several times already, trees come down, and it takes a flurry of cutting and clearing to open them up again. I like to have this done within a week of a big blow, but sometimes it takes a little longer, especially if falling trees have damaged a bridge.
We had a few of these this year. The first was when a massive 30” diameter hemlock stub crushed a bridge section on Elaine’s trail. The 35’ tall stump was thoroughly colonized by Ganoderma tsugae mycelium that had turned large portions of trunk to the consistency of wet cardboard. The hemlock varnish shelf is closely related to the reishi - a renowned medicinal fungus with a glossy, lacquer red exterior. I love harvesting them to make tinctures or display around my house. I was impressed, but not pleased, when the rotten hemlock drove the 5’ steel posts holding up the bridge straight into the ground like finish nails. Luckily, the portion of the bridge effected isn’t essential, it was built at a time when beavers had dammed this portion of the waterway. The dam has since disintegrated, and the formerly flooded gully is now a small stream, easily crossed by the unaffected portion of the bridge.
The second bridge was a portion of the bog bridging at Broad Point that lifted and torqued. The cause of this is something of a mystery. No trees were down nearby, but its possible nearby spruce roots levered it up from beneath as the tree rocked in high southeasterly winds. In a testament to the bog bridging system we have adopted, this was thankfully easy to isolate and fix.
In other bridge news, we have removed the bridge we installed over the Marsh Pond breach at Hutchins beach for the season. This was the plan from the beginning, as we feared any winter storms, like the ones that caused the breach last year, would seriously damage it. The bridge has been moved to safety for the winter, and will be reinstalled on taller posts in the spring. This fall extreme high tides (over 12’) left the bridge submerged at peak high water. Raising the bridge, a foot or more would keep it above the highest tides. The tide also flooded a significant portion of the dune leading to the bridge, so we are considering adding sections at both ends to extend it.
If you’re out hiking the trails this Winter, make sure to take care on snowy, icy slopes, and enjoy the beauty that Winter in Maine holds.