Recent Articles from FoBR Newsletters

Trail Markers

No sense of direction? No problem.

Thanks to an Eagle Scout candidate and his friends, even the most easily lost hikers should have no trouble finding where they are on the Bull Run Mountain Natural Area trails.

Mike Reese, a senior at Osbourn High School in Manassas, along with some friends from Troop 1185, has placed permanent trail markers at each trail intersection. All told, the project includes 16 trail markers and more than 220 man-hours, Reese said.

Each marker is set on a three-inch post of treated lumber, sunk in concrete. Rather than using words to denote the trail, Reese followed current trail marking standards and placed a color designating the trial inside the cut-out piece of wood atop the post. The direction that the color points - the effect is not unlike the viewer of a periscope - is the direction that the trail goes.

Searching for material that would be cheap yet durable, Reese came up with the idea of using cut-up plastic notebook covers for the colored pieces. The rest of the materials, including the wood and concrete, were donated by local businesses. The mule-like toughness required to push concrete in a wheelbarrow up the trails from the Mountain House was supplied by eight fellow scouts and parents, who accomplished most of the work on Saturday, Sept. 8.

Friends of Bull Run is preparing new maps that indicate the color-coding of the trails (and that add recent additions like the Fern Hollow Trail). When those are available, we'll take down the few "written" signs, giving at least parts of the preserve a more natural look.

As for Reese, he says that once he recovers from the soreness the work entailed, he plans to complete the merit badges necessary for the rank of Eagle Scout. Scouting, he says, is his primary hobby; he even serves as a counselor at a scout camp in the summer. He plans to attend Virginia Tech next fall and study electrical engineering.