National Trails Day 2006 Big Success for ADK

Trails Day 2006 (June 3 rd) dawned overcast and rainy.   However, over the 90 ADKers who made the trip to Inlet did not let the weather dampen their spirits.   Scores of members undertook projects at nine locations including West Mountain, Black Bear Mountain, Queer Lake trail, Remson Falls, Chain Ponds trail, Brown's Tract trail, May's Pond trail, Rocky Mountain, and the Old Dam Nature trail. Thankfully the rain and cooler weather seemed to suppress the insects at many of the locations.   Much of the work entailed side cutting and blow down removal.  

The town of Inlet welcomed ADK with a Friday night reception at The Woods Inn on the shore of beautiful Fourth Lake.   Many of those who attended had a great dinner in their ornate dining room.   Later that night those who wished to camp out on Friday returned to our campsites in the DEC Limekiln Lake campground.   These campsites were kindly provided gratis by the DEC.   The campground was available both Friday and Saturday nights.   The hot showers there sure felt good Saturday afternoon after a wet day of trail work.

Saturday morning the Black Bear Mountain crew of Julie, Kim, Charlene, Gail, and Kathy (back row) and Karen and Karen (front rwo) were ready for anything.   Each person or pair in the crew would stop to tackle a section of the trail before leapfrogging ahead to the next section that needed their expert attention.  

 

 

Here Julie is cutting some minor blow down off of the trail.   The rain made it more obvious where there were drainage problems along the Black Bear Mountain trail.  

 

 

 

This picture showns Karen clearing some of the drainage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Due to the popularity of the Rocky Mountain trail, many of its sections had expanded to an unacceptable width.   The preferred path for the trail was remarked and brush was placed on the parts of the trail which were to be restored to natural conditions.   Since the trail is relatively steep at places, some new rock work was undertaken.   Two teams undertook two separate rock projects.

Here Aaron and John are “harvesting” a rock for use at one spot.   Rock work is dirty business on the best of days, but on this occasion the work was done in ankle deep mud.  In order to make the work as permanent as possible, the rocks used are often too big to pick up.  

 

 

Here Matt and Ken are using the ubiquitous pry bars to move a rock down into place.   If they aren't careful (or lucky) the rock will roll down the hill past the intended location.   Then they will need to find another rock since this one is too big to move back up hill.  

 

 

 

In addition to being dirty work, it is also hard work as evidenced here by Ken.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Saturday evening, National Trails Day volunteers gathered at the Old Barn Inn, in Inlet, for dinner and celebration. At dinner one could really see that National Trails Day with ADK is just as much a convention of trail workers as it is a day of volunteer trail work. Talk of the day's work, one volunteer's saw collection and the enormous trees he removed from across the trail, and the extensive work ADK's Onondaga Chapter is completing on the Finger Lakes Trail are some of the conversations that were heard at various tables.

Jamie Savage was there to set the tone of the evening with his banjo picking and guitar strumming. The Old Barn served up one fantastic dinner—those folks certainly know how to make a trail crew happy. Mitch Lee, who played such an important role in coordinating National Trails Day with the community of Inlet, also spoke to the group about the importance of hiking trails to the local community.

Many volunteers were winners as Wes Lampman and Jonathan Mogelever raffled off about thirty gifts for participants including a $100 gift certificate from Merrell and the annual Asolo Boot raffle for a pair of PowerMatic 200 GV backpacking boots.

 

As they look forward to each year, the volunteers received National Trails Day T-Shirts and gifts of GrandyOats Trail Mix, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters coffee, and everyone's favorite Badger Balm. ADK thanked Adirondack Area Network for their generous sponsorship of National Trails Day 2006. ADK extends a special thank you to Entergy, who generously underwrote the expenses for National Trails Day 2006. Their support made such a wonderful, hard-working day for the hiking trails possible for us all.