Hannah Feroce from the University of Pittsburgh and dozens of other college students spend their spring break working to build sections of the Cumberland Trail on the plateau near Barker Camp Road.
Staff photo by John Rawlston/Chattanooga Times Free PressWALDEN’S RIDGE-Leah Turner took off her gloves and flexed her fingers in the cold, damp air.
“My hands are sore,” she said with a grin. “This is a lot harder than I expected.”
Building a segment of the Cumberland Trail sounded glamorous on the alternative spring break list at their colleges, said Turner and other students. They worked last week in sprinkling rain and sleet atop Walden’s Ridge between Soddy-Daisy and Dunlap, Tenn.
For a month every February and March, college students from all over the country come to East Tennessee for a week to blaze a trail. This year the work began Feb. 27 and will end March 26.
Last week, Turner and 71 other students from five Midwestern universities and about 11 adult volunteers dug, leveled and cleared a little more than a mile of trail – rock by grueling rock.