Adam Ewel, an Eagle Scout candidate from Troop 773 in Potomac, organized and led a group of volunteers recently in helping to re-route the northern section of Little Bennett Park's Purdum Trail.

The Parks Department built a small parking lot near Purdum's northern trailhead last year, but trail users were required to walk about a quarter mile down a shared public-private driveway to reach the trail. Ewel's project helped fix this problem by establishing a new natural surface section of the Purdum trail linking directly from the Burnt Hills Road parking lot to the rest of the Purdum Trail.

Ewel's team of volunteers first cleared the path of the new trail by removing debris, logs and tree stumps and then raking the new trail clean to the ground surface. Using loppers, they also cleared low hanging branches from trees near the new trail to a height of 10' enabling equestrians to use the trail.

After clearing the trail, his team graded it and filled in holes to leave a smooth trail surface. They also removed several invasive Japanese barberry bushes from the trail pathway and the area immediately surrounding it as barberry is beginning to get established in this part of the Park, an area largely free of most other non-native invasive plants. Finally, they blazed the trail with the traditional blue swatches used to mark official park trails.

See a small photo album of Ewel's trail project. The Friends of Little Bennett have been working with several Eagle scouts on projects in the Park. For further information, visit our Eagle scout project webpage.

Posted May 27, 2010