Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Konnarock Crew trail builders Jackie Dowd (left) and Al Patrick move a rock out of the forest after 'mining' for it on Pearis Mountain in Giles County. It will be used on the Appalachian Trail as a 'check step' to harden the trail and control or divert water from the footpath.

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• See photos and hear audio from a recent work trip.

PEARISBURG -- As dusk fell on a forest campsite in Giles County early this month, pain stabbed through Jackie Dowd's dirt-caked arms and back.

"I'm tired, like I've been shot with a tranquilizer dart," the 26-year-old accountant from Richmond said to seven other campers who sat in a circle on folding chairs and coolers.

During the past four days, Dowd and the others had heaved boulders, ripped up forest floor and laid path on the Appalachian Trail as part of the volunteer Konnarock Trail Crew.

The campers couldn't lift themselves out of their chairs to go to bed. And come morning there would be one more day of trail work.

Each summer since 1983, volunteers have laid trail with the Konnarock Trail Crew, a program run by the nonprofit Appalachian Trail Conservancy.

For 12 one-week sessions from early May to mid-August, volunteers sleep in tents and endure long hikes, muscle aches and their own smell. For their effort, they take home a T-shirt.

Dowd and the others arrived in the woods with two goals -- to build 11 rock steps on a new section of trail on Pearis Mountain near Pearisburg and relocate two sections of trail near the popular Angels Rest overlook.

But first they had to dig a privy.

Ted Wilson, a 27-year-old crew leader with a long beard, led three volunteers into a stand of trees a short walk from camp.

When he found the right spot for the forest bathroom, Wilson threw his arms around a small tree.

"This will be a good hugger," he said and squatted over the ground.

The diggers took turns swinging pick axes and shoveled a 3-foot trench in the rocky soil.

"I myself am a little privy shy," said Brittany Spencer, a 26-year-old college student from North Carolina who planned to work with the crew for six weeks.

"I think I have the other problem," Dowd said.

After the privy was finished, the crew strapped fire axes to their packs and hiked four miles into the forest. It was a trip they would make several times.

Trail work is a slog. The crew used long metal bars to pry each mammoth boulder in the route of the new path loose from the soil. Then they teamed up to flip the boulders end-over-end off the trail.

They knocked down trees, clawed through roots and raked the path smooth. Then they repositioned the boulders.

On the third day, Al Patrick, a 69-year-old retired business professor from Kentucky, dug three holes, jockeyed three flat-top boulders into the holes and anchored them with smaller rocks.

It took six hours -- two hours a rock -- to build steps that hikers will stride over in seconds.

"I hope the hikers. ... Well, they won't realize what went into it," Patrick said. "I didn't realize what went into it."

Since 1999, Patrick has section-hiked most of the 2,175-mile trail that winds from Georgia to Maine. In August, he plans to hike his final section, a 250-mile trek into Maine and up Mount Katahdin.

Each week, there are two Konnarock crews working on the trail between Rockfish Gap in Nelson County and Springer Mountain in Georgia. Since 2001, the number of volunteers on the crew has fallen, said Kerry Wood, volunteer program manager of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. At times, there have been as few as two volunteers on a crew, he said.

People seem to have more demands for their time, and maybe can't take time off from work like they could when the economy was stronger, he said.

While volunteers' numbers have dropped, the number of hikers on the trail has risen, creating the need for more maintenance. The crews can't keep up, Wood said.

"It's funny how much trail that needs work gets passed on the way to the work site," he said.

In addition to Dowd, Patrick and Spencer, the volunteers early this month included a seventh-grade science teacher from Tennessee and two doctoral students from Taiwan who had been on the crew for four weeks.

Hsu Mingchien, one of the doctoral students, learned about Konnarock on the Internet. An environmental activist in Taiwan, Hsu said she volunteered at Konnarock to learn how to preserve trails in Taiwan.

Wilson said past volunteers have ranged from a judge and a homeland security agent to "hippies who live out of their vans." Some are hikers, but many have never spent a night outside, he said.

Despite the hard work, many volunteers return. Dowd volunteered last year. Trail work, she said, is a vacation from her "hermetic" life.

"At work I have five or six people I am answering to," she said. "E-mails, phone calls, it's like you have an electronic leash on yourself."

Spencer, the college student from North Carolina, knew she was in for a challenge on the trail. Before she left home, she jotted goals in her notebook.

Goal No. 1: "I don't want to be the complainer," Spencer said.

But by the fourth day, Spencer's feet and toes were dotted with bright pink blisters. That morning, she wrapped her feet in medical tape. She ran up the trail to the work site to get the pain over with. Hours later, she jogged back.

She did not complain.

After four weeks in the woods, Chien Yuju, the second doctoral student, was hungry for Chinese food. But more than that, she wanted a shower. Her smell, she said, was keeping her up at night.

At camp, the crew had water to drink, but there was no water for washing. They washed their hands with hand sanitizer.

Chien had showered only three times in four weeks, at the Konnarock base in Smyth County between sessions.

Back at camp on the night before they would leave the woods, the group boiled rice and beans and cooked a kettle of mashed potatoes with cheese.

As they sipped bottles of Yuengling, conversation wound from Dollywood to loofah sponges to Chewbacca.

They didn't talk about the next day's work.

Dowd asked if anyone had a Tylenol. Wilson, who had a toothache, gave her two Aleve.

About 9 p.m., Dowd stood up. She was first to go to her tent.

"What time would you like a wake-up call tomorrow?" Wilson said.

Dowd managed a positive voice.

"6:30 is good."