Five of us met at Bryant Camp at 8:45, loaded with tools, and hiked up to Taft Lodge to replace the rotting planks of the deck.

The new planks had been brought up previously on the gondola and carried over from on the old Fern Trail by members of the UVM Outing Club. Removing the benches and some of the end planks was tricky, as they had been screwed in and the screw heads were sunken into the wood and almost completely hidden. But once those were removed we came up with a technique of prying the old nailed in decking with a sideways 2×4. Almost every plank broke apart when we did this, showing the need for replacement.

Putting in the new planks went much faster. They had all been cut to size, and only one cut with a handsaw was needed on site to notch a plank around the metal grating. A couple joists were beginning to show some degradation, so we added sister joists to those to share the load. The old benches were then put back, with a couple rotted base supports replaced. The benches will need complete replacement in the next couple years. We finished up and headed down around 2:30.

Work crew: Dana Baron, Tom Candon, David Hathaway, Steve Titcomb, Howard VanBenthuysen.