By Ed Lynch
Coming from the construction industry and having led crews of laborers, carpenters, and other building trades, I thought that leading crews on work days primarily consisting of trail building and maintenance would be an easy step, and in some ways I was correct in this assumption. However, there were several things I failed to take into account.
Mainly, the job is directing the energy of the volunteers in a constructive fashion toward a common goal as laid out by the technical advisor. That seems simple enough. As long as you can communicate your vision of what a trail should look like based on our usual Friends of the Peak standards, this should be easy. But, consider where these people are from. Your work force can consist of people who have climbed mountains much larger than Pikes Peak with no trails, to people whose hiking has been limited to smooth wide bike paths built and maintained by machinery and used by thousands of people. So, to say "we need to widen the trail a bit here..." means different things to different people. You may get 6 more inches of trail or an additional 6 feet of width depending on their concept of a trail. The marathon runner in the crew may do this work with blinding speed when compared to the retiree who has never been above timberline before (or the opposite may be true).
When you are a person working with tools, you take into account how the tools work, what you can do with them and how you can use them efficiently. When you are a crew leader, the volunteers are your tools. You still need to use them efficiently and figure out what they are capable of, what their strengths and weaknesses are and how long they are going to last. But you also have to remember that they need a break now and then as well to keep them sharp.
Some people might say you get what you pay for with volunteer help. But I think you get a great deal more. Many times I have heard people comment at the end of the day, that they were certain there was no way we could accomplish our goals set out at the beginning of the day. But by the end, they were amazed at the quantity as well as the quality of work that was done. This is why crew leaders are essential.
On one workday, we were nearing the end of the project, and I noticed several plants lying on the ground. I also saw several corresponding labels stuck in the ground on the near hillside. For lack of anything better to do, I picked up the plants and set them next to their appropriate stakes and moved on. I picked up the shovel that I had come to get and when I turned around, the half dozen people that were standing around when I passed the first time were all gleefully planting the plants that I had laid out. Hence the importance of a crew leader. With my background, it was a obvious that this was what needed to be done, but to these volunteers, it was not nearly as straight forward.
Being a carpenter, I deal with spatial relations on a daily basis. People on my crews at work usually have similar backgrounds, and I can take shortcuts to the end product. But, on any given workday, there are people from all walks of life, who don't deal with the physical properties of building materials. People who don't know that this rock they are attempting to stick in a wall cannot fit. They need direction. By the end of the day, they have become stone masons. I'm sure that these people will not balk at a small retaining wall in their garden after a FOTP workday.
One thing unique to work days, especially trail building, is the "seat of the pants" nature of the project. By that I mean the lack of a blueprint or template for what the finished product is supposed to look like. This adds both difficulty and freedom to a project. One valuable tool to use is a section of trail that has similar conditions and is already complete. Then you can say, "Make it look like that." If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an example must be worth a thousand pictures.
There is a balancing act between over managing and under managing. You can't tell every person how to shovel every scoop of dirt, or let a trail get too wide, too narrow or wander off course. That is a challenge with seasoned veterans, but with untrained individuals, an even greater one. The best payoff for people is a solid section of new trail or a bridge where none existed before.
The crew leader has to be the visionary of the crew. I liken it to putting together a jigsaw puzzle where someone has lost the lid to the box. Close work with the technical advisor can make this process go smoothly. The advisor has usually laid out the work, and has the best idea of what the finished product should look like. As to how you get to the end, that's pretty much up to you. That's where your "tools" come into play.
A friend of mine, when asked how his climbing trip went, replied "Pretty good, nobody died..." and work days, first and foremost, shouldn't kill anybody. Nor should they injure or maim anyone. Safety and proper tool use is essential. A safety review is a must at the beginning of each workday.
As many projects as I have been on, it still amazes me how much work motivated volunteers can accomplish without getting a paycheck. At the end of the day, when the crew looks back on what they have collectively accomplished the smiles and the satisfaction of a job well done is all the payoff these people need. Crew leaders included.
