Bear Mountain Trails Project

Make an Impact!

2007-11-28T12:16:00.000-05:00

We're running out of time for work this season. As the cold and rain creep in, our work slows down and we're planning to wrap up the season around the middle of December. Then, it won't be until April that we're breaking ground again at Bear Mountain. I want to encourage you to head up to the mountain any day of the week (except Tuesday and Wednesday) and really make an impact as we wrap up 2007!

Please call Eddie Walsh at least 24 hours in advance at 845-591-1537 so we know to expect you!

Want to Learn More Skills? Attend one of our Upcoming Workshops!

2007-10-12T14:31:00.000-05:00

Late Fall 2007 Trail University Workshops at Bear Mountain

Contact: Leslie Rapparlie (rapparlie@nynjtc.org) for more information (201) 512-9348 x 28

Trail Construction: Building Over Bedrock: The art of stone pinning
Dates: October 26-29th (come out for all days or for just the weekend)
Instructor: Peter Jensen
Close to where the new AT route joins the old, the trail will wrap around a ridge which is a smooth bedrock ledge for nearly 60 linear feet. Here, for these four days, crews will be anchoring a two to three foot tall crib wall onto numerous steel pins for that entire length while enjoying leafless views down onto the Bear Mountain Bridge, Anthony’s Nose, and the Hudson River. Most quarrying will be done prior to the weekend. Allowing participants a unique opportunity to learn and perfect skills. Participants must have volunteers on stone work trail crews before and get permission to participate from Construction Manager or the General Project Manager (see above).

Trail Construction: Stone Step Construction for Beginners
Dates: November 3rd and 4th
Instructors: Jon Paulson, former SCA crew leader and Yosemite National Park Trail Crew Member
Participants will learn how to build stone steps on the western side of Bear Mountain, a short distance from the Summit Tower. Several different methods will be employed to build a two foot’ wide stone staircase in beginner-friendly terrain on the mountain’s gentler south side. Instruction and tips will be given to safely move stone with minimal effort and impact to the environment.

Advanced Trail Construction: Stone Crib Wall Construction
Dates: November 10th and 11th
Instructors: TBD
If you missed these workshops in the fall or in year one, this may be your last chance in a while as the 2008 season has mostly stone steps planned. Participants in this workshop will learn to build dry stack stone retaining walls (a.k.a. crib walls). In addition to key structural and design requirements, participants will also learn how to use stone shaping tools to cut rock to desired shapes and sizes.

Advanced Trail Construction: Stone Cutting and Shaping
Dates: November 17th and 18th
Instructors: Eddie Walsh and Matt Townsend
This will be the inaugural workshop to take place in the dramatic “boulder fields” uphill of Hessian Lake. Stone cut and split during this workshop will be used as five foot wide stone steps that wind between bus-sized boulders and under dramatic rock ledges. By learning how the stone prefers to break, participants in this classic Bear Mountain workshop spend time learning how to split boulders into usable steps and smaller boulders as well as how to delicately shape stone.

Advanced Trail Construction: Stone Paving
Dates: December 1 and 2
Stone Paving, also called rip-rap, or pitching, is a technique used to create a durable walking surfacing that can withstand heavy water flows. On Bear Mountain it is used below large rock slabs and in areas where intermittent streams flow through a wide area of hillside. Essentially, it is the construction of a stone patio like structure across the walking surface. Tools used include basic rock moving tools, shaping tools and occasionally rock saws. This work differs from other construction work on the mountain in that the stones used are usually smaller and easier to handle.

Advanced Trail Skills: Rigging and Highline Basics

Dates: December 1 and 2
Learn the basic safety and operational methods of using highlines to move large stones. This workshop will take place in the lower boulder fields above Hessian Lake, weather permitting.

Fall 2007 Update

2007-10-12T14:20:00.000-05:00

What a long and terrific summer. Full of workshops and the Biennial conference, volunteers on Bear Mountain have been busy. And now we are looking forward to another exciting fall. We had a lot of help and support this summer. Thank you to all those volunteers that came out and sweat with us in the grueling summer heat.

Now, with our focus on autumn, we are looking forward to the crew from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy to join us. Led by Ted Wilson, this crew of seven to eight has been working on Bear Mountain since the founding. This season they will spend 3 weeks camping and building new trail for the project. Most crew members are from the eastern side of the country but the most traveled volunteers, Edward and Alan, will join us from Great Britain. The skill amongst this group ranges from beginner to experienced, but all are hard workers and eager to learn. The newcomers are like every volunteer we see here: quick and willing to learn and have fun!
With their first two weeks completed, this group has completed a great amount of trail, including six stairs. This dedicated team came together to learn specialized skills together, their stone cribbing skills are equal to the masters’. Ted’s crew has been working to connect the work from this summer’s Biennial Conference to the waterfall area just before the boulder field and North face section of Bear Mountain. So far, the ATC crew has built sixty-eight and a half feet of trail with an average crib wall height of two feet. This gives us a total of six hundred sixteen square feet of trail. Not to bad for “beginners.”

With just one more week left of work with the ATC, we are looking for more individual volunteers to come and complete the work. We also look forward to having SCA crew leaders; Mike Johnson, Erin Anderson, and Jon Paulson return to the project. With the temperature cooling down and becoming generally more pleasant, we look forward to an autumn that will be just as busy as summer!

Get Ready to Get Dirty

2007-03-14T12:56:00.000-05:00

With winter dying out, we at the Bear Mountain Trails Project are getting ready for another season up on the mountain. Tools have been maintained and ordered, new volunteers have been recruited and don't forget about the workshops! Oh glorious workshops! Have you signed up for any yet? Better get to it for they fill up fast. Also any of you out there that would like to request a group day might want to start thinking about reserving your day as we only have a few left available. So as you can see we have been busy while the cold has been upon us. For those of you interested in any workshops that are going on this season you can find your interest and sign up at www.nynjtc.org/workshops/bearmt/index.html, but be quick for like I mentioned they fill up fast and we start on March 25, 2007. If you have any questions you can contact me, Matt Townsend, at townsend@nynjtc.org, or our Volunteer Coordinator, Heidi Adami at adami@nynjtc.org. Hurry up and can't wait to see you there!

Before and After Pictures

2007-02-09T12:57:00.000-05:00

Hello. I'm Matt Townsend

2007-01-29T12:11:00.000-05:00

With winter coming on, a few changes occurred at Bear Mountain. First we said goodbye to interns Dan and Carrol. We will definitely miss them for all the effort and hard hours they put in. With Dan and Carrol fading with the season, I took over. My name is Matt Townsend and I have taken the place as the new SCA Hudson Valley Corp intern. Well not so new maybe, I started in October as some of you will remember. A little about me..... I'm originally from the other side of New York state where I earned my Eagle Scout rank almost ten years ago. Between then and now I spent my time pursuing a B.A. in the Environmental Studies field and also as a professional landscaper. My free time was spent in the woods on various short walkabouts. Sooo... That's a little about me. Now what has been happening on the mountain the past month. Well of course things have been winding down, but not to a halt. Any day that the weather treats us fair I'm up there slugging away at various tasks, or leading worktrips. There is a lot of maintenance for tools. Last year saw lots of wall built and lots of handles broken. Recently we had a twenty foot storage container shipped to the site for tools to be kept in out of the weather. Time has also been spent seeing that new equipment and tools have been ordered for this year. There has been a lot of time in planning, planning, planning. We have been planning for group days in the spring as well as workshop schedules. I personally am planning a scout outing and a day for an SCA service project. Both to take place in the late spring. Planning is also under way to once again have an SCA leader crew come in for the spring months. We are all looking forward to see them again. That's it for now. I'm gonna do my best to keep this blog updated so keep checking back for recent posts and pictures.

We're winding down

2006-11-27T14:03:00.000-05:00

Well, folks, its been awhile. I apologize. I've been spending more of my office time working on the next installment of the newsletter. It will have a wrap up of the year, and a sundry other announcements. I have also been working on an exciting development of our web presence.

we have...pictures!

I signed us up for free web hosting of pictures so that they are accessible for you all to see. We've taken many pictures, but were not really able to get them up onto the NYNJTC website, so I found us a site that has some great features.

The best part is that you can email us any pictures you've taken and send them to us at the email: Bear_Mountain_Trails@pickle.com and we can upload them directly. Also, you can leave comments too! The website to see the albums at is: http://www.pickle.com/bear_mountain_trails Be sure to go!

Anyway, updates on the work done. A large contigous piece of trail is completed, with all the steps placed. We even had treading put down in many places, all it needs now is a little bit of native mineral soil put down on top to hide the blue color of the imported gravel and dust and it is 100% completed. If you haven't been out in awhile, you will see just how much was completed this year. We still have this weekend and then whenever the weather is good this winter to get a bit more done, but still, its impressive. We will have a count out for you with the newsletter.

On Nov 11th, we had a womens work trip. The hosts of this work trip were Sarah, Erin, me (Carol), and Liz (half day, her dad was visiting and working on the other side for the frist half) hosting with Leslie and Deb volunteering. Instead of kicking the usual co-ed work trip off the mountain, we went to the south face of the mountain and did some good old fashioned side hilling trail building. This is how most trail building is done, for more backcountry hiking. What you do is use a hoe to dig out the flat bench for the hiking trail, compared to what we are doing on the East face, where we build the bench out of crib wall. The south face is used generally only by through hikers and other more serious hikers out for long hikes, compared to people's shorter hikes up to the top of the mountain and back. I really enjoyed the side hilling. It can be tiring work, but it is fun because its safe to just chit chat as you hack at the dirt. It was a beautiful warm day for November, and since we were on the south face we had sunlight all day, on top of the gorgeous views.

Also on that day, we had a large number of other volunteers on the main project area, including 4 women from the Mass Parks trail building SCA crew, plus Liz's dad, Job (his first day out I think), Mike and Owen Garrison, Andy Helck and Richard Lynch. I wasn't there when they were working but I know that they got a lot of work done!

On Friday the 17th, we had a group of 9 students and 2 teachers from Peekskill HS come out and do some hard work and get dirty. The were Jasmine, Angie, Shannon, Pira, Anthony, Jacqueline, Rob, Billy and the teachers Mr Benvenga and Ms Day. They day started out interesting enough. They had been promised a 15 person van to bring them on this field trip, and that was all the 9 of them needed. The problem is they got a full sized bus. While for most trips, this is probably not a problem, if only excessive, for this trip it was. It meant they had to hike up. Oh the groaning and complaining about the steep hike! They were assured that it was the hardest work of the day. Once they got to the worksite they were down to work. A few of the volunteers went and helped fly some rocks down the mountain, and a few brave boys helped with using rock bars to get some heavy rocks moved over to the wall area for them to be set. Other volunteers helped shovel and move the fine gravel to cover the trail. One of the volunteers, Anthony, was using our canycom powered "wheelbarrow" and loved it. He wanted to come back just to drive the thing again. It is kind of fun, but I find the noise to eventually become tiresome. A few more students went up to the road top to shovel the gravel into the carrier. At the end of the day, they all had to walk back down. Some of the student, instead of walking, fell the whole way down and probably took half the mountain home on their clothes. They did have fun though! I hope more HS groups come out to work on the project.

The next weekend we had a womens workshop. Hosting the workshop were Erin, Sarah, Denise Vitale and me, and attendees were Liz Mellen, Cal Rizzuto, Joan James, Eileen O'Reilly and Vicki Rubino. We focused on a smattering of basic rock work to get everyone acquainted with the work that happens on the mountain. We spent much of Saturday flying rocks down to the wall site, as well as using our rock moving skills with rock bars. On Sunday, we completed flying the rocks down, and then Sarah was teaching crib wall building, while a few of us dug a trench to make sure the water flowing down the old logging road actually all goes over the stone paving built a few weeks earlier and not over some other part of the trail.

Last weekend we had a college day work trip. It wasn't hugely attended but we had fun. Our workers were Dan, Me, and Jon, with volunteers Andy (not a college student) and Job and new volunteer and Job's friend Annalisa. We primarily focussed on moving the small gravel down the mountain for tread topping. Andy brought his electric belay machine that pulled the carrier of gravel up and down the mountain: Success! We can finally move this stuff! See, the bigger gravel goes down the chute quite efficiently, but the smaller stuff would just get stuck, especially the fine rock dust. We had the idea for the carrier a long time ago, but getting the logistics to cooperate is what took awhile. Finally, we got a metal tripod that held the cable up high enough to clear the hillside completely. Of course, Andy and Eddie have now decided that this is too slow a process but its certainly faster then never. They have started scheming and problem solving again. Still, its great to have the material down at the site finally. At the end of the day, we went down to the inn area and had a picnic with BBQ and pasta salad and chips and cake etc.

The next day was even quieter, with just me, Jon, Dan, Liz and a volunteer, Bill Linhart. We worked at a further down section of the trail, rocks were flown, a few rocks were set by Liz and Bill, and then we made crush. It was a nice day though.

Carol

Ps- I can't seem to get the photo uploader to work properly, and editting the photo away also doesn't seem to be working. I apologize for the bugs!

Deluge!

2006-10-30T15:04:00.000-05:00

This weekend, you probably noticed the large amount of rain. Us here on the Bear Mountain Trails Project don't seem to shy away from a little bit of (ok a lot of) water. Friday and Sunday were both wonderful, if only a bit brisk, but Saturday was windy and rainy. There were places with water flowing that I've never seen flowing from the rain before. The waterfall was intense, I suspect it seldom gets much bigger. Also, the reason the existing AT needs to be replaced was entirely apparent- some sections were literally flowing straight through. The places that go directly down the fall line were inundated and left nowhere to walk without stepping into 4 inches of water.

We put up tarps to work under over most of the sites that people were working at. In the morning the rain was constant but it did wax and wane in intensity. The rain actually did stop in the afternoon. The mountain was beautiful under the misty shroud, and the smell of wet leaves. The post rain beauty almost compensated for the cold wet pants and boots.

There was supposed to be a stone shaping workshop, however it was cancelled due to the weather. One of the participants did decide to come out though and volunteer with us. Hormoz Kheirabi seemed to have had a lot of fun and worked with Dan on the section of wall that he has been building. Hormoz also came out on Sunday to work as well. Also on Sunday, Andy Helyk came out. He helped to set up some new rigging and then bring some rocks down to build some stairs. Also out helping us was Sarah Heidenreich and Will Stark.

A lot of work is getting done out here- I hope you all find a chance to come out and work soon! Its amazing to see the progress!

Also, don't forget to bring water. Save your empty jugs, clean them out and fill with potable water for the Crew- their water has been turned off.

Workshops and Work trips

2006-10-23T09:45:00.000-05:00

Hi,

We've had a few work trips and work shops since last I wrote.

On Friday the 13th, we had an orientation and overview hike. There were a few attendees, as well as the newly arrived SCA crew leaders group. The SCA people had mostly built trails in backcountry settings and they are all very excited to do trailbuilding that is this technical and made to last under high usage for a hundred years.

The Student Conservation Association is an organization that was concieved of by a Vassar student in the 50's in her senior thesis paper. She thought that having outdoors service for High School students would lead to a lifelong love of nature and care for the earth. This led to the SCA having crews of High School students led by 2 Crew leaders to work in places like national parks to build trails. This program is still around and these 6 people are crew leaders who have lead High School groups in the past. They are great to work with and can teach our volunteers a lot.

On Saturday and Sunday, we had a rigging workshop. We had Bob Reardon and the SCA crew there to learn about the safty and mechanics of rigging. Even with mechanical advantage on my side I had a hard time beating Eddie in tug-o-war, but I'm not all that muscle bound yet. Time to start doing some rockbar lifts! Seriously, this workshop is fun because we get to play games with pulleys, as well as learn about the systems that we have.

The crew kept working out there through the cold and rain- it rained last week on both Tuesday and Friday, but they still got a lot done. Starting on Saturday, Jed Talbot is teaching a dry stack stone cribbing workshop that is actually still running until Tuesday. We got our new SCA 10 month intern at the TC out there- his name is Matt, as well as 2 volunteers, Joe and Liz. We also had a man named Dave out; he worked with Jed out in California. Jed's dog Cedar was there- he didn't get any wall built but he fetched many a stick by using his imploring "throw that stick for me" eyes. I love that dog, though its true he was probably a work distraction, I was glad to have him around. Anyway, I know Joe and Liz were excited to come out again and work with the SCAers, and I think I learned a little more about stonework.

Also, a little plea from the crew. The water at the camp was turned off today for the end of the season so if you happen to be coming to the mountain, try and bring extra water for them. If every volunteer coming out brings an extra gallon or 2 of water, then they can cook a little more pasta, drink more tea or brush a little more teeth.

Sorry its been so long!

2006-10-10T10:59:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone again,

Sorry its been so long. Since I had been away for a few weeks, I had missed some happenings on Bear Mountain and wanted to have the other intern Dan write a post for you about them instead but we have just been too busy for me to have the time to fill him in on the working of this blog. I decided its been long enough that I'll just catch you up as best as I can.

Well, in the last month and a halfish, a LOT has been accomplished! There were a few workshops in September; Josh Ryan's stone cribbing workshops. I don't know everyone who was there since I wasn't but Dan got some good pictures of the days.

We had the Mahwah Boy Scout troop come out on Sept 23rd to complete their 50mile patch. They had done 50miles of paddling but to get their patch they also have to do 10 hours of service. They came out and got a lot accomplished! We had one group on corridor clearing- cutting through fallen logs, trimming branches etc, another group on digging a trench for cribbing and my group that I lead was on side hilling. Most of Bear Mountain is not "side hillable" because its just too steep for the effect we are going for, but there are a few small places where it is appropriate. My group did great! we got the whole section comepleted! Some of the other groups also got to dump some gravel down the short section of the culvert, which they greatly enjoyed.

The week later the ATC crew showed up. They worked on the section closest to the cul du sac. They got numerous base stones set and even more ground trenched. The West Hudson crew was also in on Saturday and they were working at the opposite end of the work site, setting steps and building up the walls over there. There was a forecast for rain so the ATC crew left a day early. It turns out the rain didn't happen all that much and the day got beautiful, but at least they accomplished a good deal on Friday and Saturday.
On sunday the 1st, Dan and I actually finally completed the shelves for the storage trailer! its been a long time coming from planning to finish, but its finally completed! Thanks to Brian and Christine for starting it, for Vic for helping with the plans and building, and Dan perservering when one of the shelves collapsed on you in prime sit-com follies.

The second week of the ATC crew was even more productive, as they stayed the whole time. Many rocks were split, highlined, shaped and set. The wall looks awesome and we've even started treading a little bit of it, which means is so close to complete trail. The amount of progess made since September is astounding and you all must get out and see it! (and bring some gloves, because you'll just have to work!) Thanks Casey and crew. Bob Reardon from the West Hudson crew showed up this past Saturday to help out, learning a little about the rock work and helping move lots of gravel for the backfill for the walls.

On Oct 5th we had Novartis come out for their corporate day of giving. I think I heard the count was 24 people came all the way from their headquarters in NJ up to bear mountain (there was also a group that went to work in Ringwood). Since it was such a big group that hadn't ever worked trail building before we needed to do something that would be relatively safe. We did corridor clearing on the south face of the mountain (down from the top of the mtn, away from the inn), hacking through the mountain laurel. There are so many overlooks over there, many bald faces coming out of the mountain with great views that you just don't get access to on the current AT. Be excited for this part to be completed. Once we finished this part of the work, we went over to the current work site and bucket-brigaded some of the fine gravel and dust down to the worksite. Thanks Novartis people, you did some good hard work! We were all very tired.

The SCA crew leaders come in later this week for their 4 week stay. Make sure you come out and work with us. This weekend is the rigging workshop and also upcoming this month is the Crib Wall apprenticeship and stone splitting workshop.

--Carol

Workshop 8-25

2006-08-28T15:30:00.000-05:00

Well, this weekend was certainly interesting!

We showed up on Friday for the Advanced Stone Work workshop taught by Peter Jensen, with slight drizzles and heavy fog. However, at just about the time we got down the mountain to the worksite the rain started. It quickly got very heavy, so we were just huddled under the tarp. After maybe a half an hour huddled under the tarp, we heard thunder, and the rain got harder yet. We do usually work in rain, at least light rain if not torrential downpours, but lightning is when we have to cut it off, obviously. Using metal tools and standing near the lightning rod/high line is certainly not a good idea. So, we had to call it. We stood around a little time after calling the day's work waiting for the rain to let up and were deciding the plan of action for the next day. It was decided to put up a tarp over the work area for safety reasons- you can work in the rain but there comes a point where everything get too slippery to do anything. Attendees today were- Me, Dan, Eddie, Peter and volunteers David Hogenauer, Mike Garrison and Tom Carr.

Of course, shortly after we left, the rain stopped! Isn't that the way?

After that, the new Americorp intern here and I went to the tool shed to empty the old ATC trailer and move everything into our shed. Our new intern is Dan Houser, and I hope to get him contributing to the blog here too, especially because I won't be here for 2 weeks very soon. I will be spending a week on the Clearwater Sloop and then another week at an Student Conservation Association event (The SCA is the program that I am interning through). I will finally be back here in mid September.

Saturday- The tarp did a great job at letting the ground under the crib wall get dry and so the work went smoothly. They got a dencent part of the wall done and even put in a step. Dan and I spend much of the day working on another section of the trail and shuttling gravel down to their worksite. We both are nearly novices at this work and their work went much faster and smoother then ours, but we got a base rock set and moved more rocks into the right area to become wall in the future. Attendees this day were David, Tom, Dan, me and Peter. Eddie stopped by momentarily w/ some people from the Applachian Trail Conservancy to show them the work so far.

Sunday- I was not there this day, I was at another event but it sounds like much more work got completed as well, despite the torrential downpours on this day as well. In all, Peter said that 50 sq feet of wall was built, as well as at leastone step. GOOD JOB! Attendees this day were David, Tom, Mike, Dan,and Peter.

Work Trip-8-22

2006-08-23T13:30:00.000-05:00

Hi all, Carol again.

We had a work trip again on Tuesday. Big group for a nice day.

I was off and on winch/trail grading. I was lifting up and down a large rock as well as a carrier full or gravel; most of the time I was levelling out the grade of a section of nearly completed trail. We are trying to keep the grade of the trail to be no more steep then 10%, so one section needed to be lowered to allow for that. I'm sure the long distance hikers and the families with small kids will appreciate that!

Christine was finishing up a part of the trail that needed to be recribbed, as was mentioned in a previous entry. She was putting the orange colored mineral soil as a top tread material and then patting it down.

Brian, Richard and Renato were working on moving the gravel down the way to be back fill for the stairs from Sunday etc.

Ollie and Sona were working on splitting the huuuuge rock that was quarried down 2 weeks ago Tuesday. They got a few good chunks off, but it still needs further splitting.

Eddie was, of course, walking around from place to place helping each group.

Friday starts a workshop for Advanced Stone work, so if you are interested, call up our Volunteer Coord soon! Hope to see you all soon.

Also, if you are reading this, please post a comment. It would be nice to know if we have an audience yet!

Carol

Over the last week

2006-08-21T11:22:00.000-05:00

Many of us working on the project have been in and out of the office and the work site. Its been awhile since I was at the site because I had an SCA intern service project I attended (building a blind-accessible trail at Lake Moreau St Park N of Albany). I did get to finish up the school searches so I get to start calling the schools later this week, I suspect. On Friday I went to photograph the old pre-80's AT going up to the summit and the dangerous but highly used social trail behind the old ski jump.

The Old 80's AT should be easier to restore ecologically I suspect, as in many places the organic matter is certainly starting to build back up, but the trail is definitely still used. Some of the more immediate things we need to do is to block the obvious entrance to the trail. It is right across the old Perkins loop drive from the existing AT. There are spray painted directions on the ground, but if you don't look down you might not realize that you should be turning right. I know even Thru-Hikers have taken this old route, and its understandable because it looks SO obvious. In fact, most of the old blazes are there and stand out quite a bit-certainly helped ME follow the trail. Some were painted black but that paint is wearing off and revealing the white again. I've seen the maps and the new AT we are building will actually be very close to following this old AT in this section, so making sure the old trail is masked will be important to keep people from accidently following this once the new one is completed.

The ski jump "trail" is a whole 'nother beast. It is used probably almost as much as the AT is to get to the top. It is very steep and rocky and would require a LOT of work to get people to 1) not use it and 2) restore the natural ecology. This is SO compacted here. Obviously there is nothing we can do about restoring the ski jump part, and that IS historical and maybe should be preserved safely. An interesting thing I think the park should do it is to make an historical interpretive exhibit about the ski jump, showing pictures from its heyday etc. The problem lies, of course, after that. The trail continues on its way past the ski jump ruins. It may have 100 years ago been a logging road or something but it is very wide, steep and compacted now. People probably take it because they just want to go up and it is the first access to UP from the area of the Inn (and the ski jump has steps so it looks like something to take!). The trail leads up to a lovely view of the Hudson (the new AT will give you this view too, but safely!), and after that the trail loses definition and people either turn around or just...go up the mountain in anyway they can, and that might not be a safe direction that they pick. I know in the last few weeks someone fell off of some ledge up there and broke 2 bones. This one is definitely going to be a challenge to restore; we would definitely have to hope that people would respect a sign that says "ecological resoration in process" because people already ignore the "Stay on the designated trails, people have DIED going on unofficial trails."

Sunday was another work trip, however I didn't attend, as I already had my full week in with the SCA trip. I hear they built some more stone steps and had some new young volunteers. More news on that coming on Wednesday as we have a work trip tomorrow as well! We have some new people showing up, and I hope they enjoy themselves!
See you,

Carol

ps- we are doing a photo shoot for brochures about the project tomorrow. If you know any aspiring models come along! Actually, you don't need to be a model, none of us are! but you will "look beautiful darlink."

Work other then trail building

2006-08-14T12:48:00.000-05:00

Since my last entry, we haven't done any trail work exactly, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy!

Some of the office things I have been working on was finding contact information for local High Schools to get more younger people out here working with us. Lets hope we get some volunteers!

On the mountain, Brian and Christine have been working on the shelves in the tool shed, and a volunteer, Vic went out one day to continue working on the shelves as well.

On friday, I went and GPSed the new AT up until the Perkins drive cul du sac, so that we can get a better idea of how the trail looks and possibly put it onto a real map. I had a tough morning getting satellites but after the first hour and a half I was getting a good signal and it went pretty well. GPSing is fun when it works well. If you are interested in GPSing, some of the North New Jersey trails need some GPS work done so feel free to call us and ask us about it.

On Saturday, with all its beautiful, breezy, non humidness, Christine, Brian and I went and did a survey of the hikers around Bear Mountain. We wanted to know how many people who hiked were really knowledgeable about hiking and the trails. It was intereresting, and certainly a good day to be sitting outside! At some point we will compile the data and hopefully post it up here. It wasn't the most scientific of surveys, but it helped guage what the visitors might want.

have a great week!

Carol

Tuesday Workday

2006-08-09T09:10:00.000-05:00

We went out to the mountain on Tuesday. We had three different project pieces going on. Steve was working on some rock shaping down the trail from the work site's toolboxes and tarp. I was working on quarrying some rocks with Roland, he was on the winch and I was on the belay rope. Brian and Christine were working on finishing up a crib wall that needed to be redone. Eddie was hopping around from group to group, as always.

I really enjoyed using the highline. There's something really neat about being able to hoist huge rocks high in the air w/ relatively little effort. I think I enjoy it more then rock shaping myself. I'll have to get in on some of those rigging workshops (how about you? sign up!).

Around 10:00, the Rockland County Americorp representative, Kathy, came with Heidi (volunteer coordiator) to check out the worksite and take some pictures and to watch out Americorp interns in action. She seemed to really enjoy seeing us work.

Eddie, Roland and Steve all left around lunch time. At that point I had to find something else to do down there as I obviously couldn't run the highline by myself. I worked a little bit at trying to find another rock to fit on a tricky rock with a roundish shape. I was a bit unsuccessful in finding the right one yet, I sure hope we didn't pick a bad base rock! I also worked a little on changing to slope in one place, so as to be closer to the desired 10% grade of the trail. Brian and Christine finished up their wall and then headed over to work some more on the shelves in the toolshed. Anyone like carpentry?

Welcome!

2006-08-07T13:02:00.001-05:00

I've just started up this blog to keep our volunteers up to date on what has been going here on the Appalachian Trail. I/we will try to update at least once a week to let you know what was accomplished, maybe post some pictures and give some shout-outs to the volunteers.

I'm a new intern here at the NYNJTC and I thought this might be something our volunteers would enjoy, and the NYNJTC would certainly like the record! I certainly hope you will agree and visit our blog every now and again. Please leave a comment when you find us!

Thanks,

Carol (the SCA intern)