Meet the volunteer leader keeping the Soapstone Trail walkable and enjoyable

JoAnn Shaner, center, is the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club’s Soapstone Trail supervisor. On the left: Carol Krafka. Right: Steve Deakins. (photo by Marlene Berlin)

by Marlene Berlin

If you’ve come across volunteers working on the Soapstone Valley Trail in the past year, you’ve run into JoAnn Shaner’s crew. Shaner has been the Soapstone Trail supervisor for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club since mid-2018. (PATC maintains many of our trails and is currently rebuilding a footbridge on the Melvin Hazen Trail.)

In Soapstone Valley, Shaner and other volunteers are keeping the trail walkable by cutting back vegetation, improving stream crossings, clearing debris from water bars that protect the trail from erosion, and removing trees that have fallen across the trail.

They did a lot of work on back in September at the stream crossing closest to the trail entrance at Broad Branch Road. The focused especially on installing the stone steps.

PATC volunteers have had to repair and even replace this and other Soapstone stream crossings a few times over the last few years, due to an increase in the number and intensity of storms capable of washing them out.

In April, Shaner and her crew were out there again, improving steps to another stream crossing and tackling a tree that had fallen across the trail

When a tree falls in a forest, it stays. When a tree blocks a trail, PATC will move it. (photo by Reza Malek-Madani)

Please contact JoAnn Shaner at [email protected] to report a downed tree blocking the trail, or to volunteer your services as a trail volunteer. You can help keep our trails and parks in good shape for all to enjoy.