Due to the likelihood of there still being ice and/or show on Cox Mountain Saturday, and the possibility of ice on the roads getting there, the Saturday February 22^nd trail maintenance workday is canceled. I hope that some of you will be able to come instead to the Sunday workday removing invasive thorny olive, listed below. It should be warmer and dryer than Saturday.

CXLD: Our next workday is Saturday February 22^nd 9AM meeting at 6101 Cole Mill Road, the loop parking area at the end of Cole Mill Road at the Fews Ford area of Eno River State Park. We will continue to do some much needed repairs on the Cox Mountain Trail, starting with the location where Bill Boyarsky’s work day finished up. We will need some volunteers to move large, heavy rocks with rock bars and the Spartacus. We will need more volunteers to help with removing trip rocks, filling holes in the trail, diverting water off the trail, and other repairs.

We are focused this Spring on trail maintenance at Eno River State Park and will hopefully soon be able to do some much needed reroutes later this year and will hopefully be able to start work on building the next segment of the MST next year.

For this workday and the special workdays below you will need to wear boots or solid shoes, work clothes and bring work gloves, water, a snack, lunch if you plan to work past noon. Tools will be provided. RSVP to fred.dietrich@duke.edu

Special invasive plant removal workdays:
In addition to the trail maintenance, we still want to continue work on removing invasive plants along the MST and the Eno River. Some of you helped out on the planting of native trees recently. Thank you so much for that. The other side of planting natives is to remove invasives to give the natives a chance.

Invasive workday 1
If any of you are available and want to help out, I will be out doing some invasive removal, this Sunday February 23^rd 9AM, meeting just past 5106 Laurel Ridge Road in Durham. Any of you want to join that would be great! We will be primarily removing thorny olive and some privet with weed wrenches, and weather permitting cutting and poisoning the larger plants. This is a location where generally there is no parking allowed, but we have special permission to park there on this one day. Tools will be provided. RSVP to fred.dietrich@duke.edu.

This is an interesting historic site, part of the fish dam road, currently overgrown with bamboo and other invasive plants.

Invasive workday 2
Saturday March 1^st 9AM meeting at River Forest Park, 1000 Windermere Drive in Durham, to remove invasive privet. This is an area where we removed a lot of privet last year, but there is some we missed and privet growing up from roots or seeds. Removing invasives is generally a multi-year task. RSVP to fred.dietrich@duke.edu