The weather is turning cooler, and it is time to start our Fall FMST trail workdays.

Our first FMST Eno River section workday, originally scheduled for Saturday, September 27^th, 2025, was cancelled due to inclement weather. We will be doing this work on Saturday, October 4th at 9AM, meeting at Penny’s Bend at the corner of Old Oxford Road and Snow Hill Road in Durham. We will be working on repairs to the trail. We may also do some trimming, trash removal, invasive species removal.

Thank you so much for all of you who came out and helped on one or more of our workdays this summer. Instead of a quiet summer, the flooding in July resulted in significant need for trail cleanup and repairs. The MST is cleaned up and mostly repaired from Guess Road to Penny’s Bend, and the trail is open and in use. There is still damage to repair, some of which was there before the storm, other problems made worse by the flooding. Much of that work is to repair the damage while it is minor, hardening the trail,  rather than waiting for the minor damage to become major damage after future rainstorms.

You will want to wear boots or solid shoes, work clothes, and bring water, lunch, insect repellent, work gloves. We will provide the tools. In the event of bad weather an email will be sent out canceling the workday.

RSVP for this workday to fred.dietrich@duke.edu

We are still working to get approval to help clear flood debris and trash and do trail repairs at Eno River State Park. We did get approval for and did one workday at ERSP, removing trash, clearing flood debris, and repairing damage to one short section of Eno Trace trail. I am still pushing to get permission for additional workdays to clear debris, repair bridges, repair trail to help get additional trails open. The current State Parks plan is to keep the Cox Mountain Trail and possibly some other trails closed for years to come, as they have mandated for the Pea Creek trail, which has now been closed for some four years. I think this is unfortunate, as the Cox Mountain Trail is one of the most popular trails in the park, so I will keep pushing to see if it cannot be opened much sooner with our volunteer work to clear debris and make necessary repairs.

We still have work to do on the MST down river from ERSP but are also still hoping we can get approval to work on the trails at ERSP and will be able to do workdays there.

See you on the trail!

Fred

Ongoing project related to the MST:

There is a significant effort now going into acquiring the old Durham-Lynchburg Road rail line and converting it into a trail. I think this would be fabulous and would benefit the MST. Public support is critical. I encourage you to click on the following link and do the survey.

Durham-to-Roxboro Rail-to-Trails