College-age crew takes on trail tasks at Forbes State Forest

Before the week is out, Bill Repko’s crew will have hauled, shoveled and raked crushed sandstone along about 700 feet of a mile-long trail near the summit of Laurel Ridge.

Guided by the retired Greater Latrobe school teacher, the team of five area college students is wrapping up improvements to trails and other features of Forbes State Forest as part of an annual Youth Conservation Corps program.

Seven weeks earlier, they started work in the Roaring Run Natural Area, a 3,500-acre area on the west slope of Laurel Ridge, between Route 31 and County Line Road in southeastern Westmoreland County.

There the crew cleared vegetation encroaching on Painter Rock Road and on dams for several ponds. They also placed a new deck on a bridge on Lookout Loop Trail and reblazed several other trails.

“Painter Rock Road has been really overgrown,” district forester Ed Callahan said. “We haven’t been able to get there in a couple years. They did a fantastic job opening that up.”

Allie Shreffler, 21, of East Huntingdon, who is studying environmental science at Saint Vincent College, said the crew turned a fallen tree from a problem into a solution along one trail.

“A tree fell, and so water was getting pushed onto the trail,” she said. “We had to move the tree and actually used that tree as a barrier to help protect the trail.”

Shreffler gravitated toward the YCC program to fulfill a college internship requirement, attracted by the involvement of the Loyalhanna Watershed Association, which partners with the state Bureau of Forestry on the annual effort.

“I really liked what they stood for, for conservation,” she said.

The Forbes State Forest staff provides work experience for the students, while the watershed association has helped provide related educational experiences. This year, watershed project manager Josh Penatzer led the students on an electrofishing expedition.

The local Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation provides funding support, including a $2,500 stipend for each student that is forwarded directly to the respective college.

Through YCC participation, students have the opportunity to explore related career interests.

“The quality of the students we have now is incredible,” Callahan said. “They want to go into some environmental field, but they might not know exactly what it is.”

Logan Kreutzberger, 20, of Penn Township, a biology major at Penn State, and Keith Kalp, 22, of Mt. Pleasant Township, an environmental science major at Saint Vincent, expressed interest in pursuing training to fight wildfires in other states through a certification program offered by the Bureau of Forestry.

“I definitely would want to do that if I get the chance,” Kreutzberger said.

Kalp also enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with like-minded peers.

“Working with them has been lots of fun,” he said.

The local YCC program has been in operation since 1970, originally recruiting high school students. It’s needed more than ever this year, after pandemic-related restrictions on many other activities drove increased use of the state forest.

“With covid last year, we got inundated with people who never used Forbes State Forest before and found it because they had nowhere else to go,” Callahan said.

A study conducted years ago found more than 200,000 people annually were visiting the state forest for recreational opportunities, including trail use. Callahan believes that number doubled last year.

This summer, the YCC crew installed signs at the forest’s Spruce Flats Bog advising visitors not to disturb plantlife there — including two insect-eating species, sundew and pitcher plants.

“There’s rare plants in there,” Callahan said. “People dig them up and take them home, and the plants just die.”

The students wrapped up their YCC tasks by applying crushed stone to resurface worn sections of Summit Trail, which connects Laurel Summit Road with the Laurel Highlands Trail and is one of the most heavily used trails in the forest.

“It gets so much use from horses, mountain bikers and hikers that it has just got muddy and will not dry up in the summer,” Callahan said. “There are big, muddy holes.”

Repko, who has led YCC crews for four decades, noted the students had to bring in the stone with wheelbarrows on some stretches of the trail that were too rocky for Gator and quad vehicles.

“The mountain bikers want the rocks,” Repko said. “They like a challenge every now and then.”