Marty was absent this weekend so all photos and comments are from Dr. David Booth, Lissa Westbrook and Russ Dooman. Our task for this project is to relocate the white trail off the road and onto a newly acquired portion of land on Hook Mountain. The newly accuired land is adjacent to the Marydell Faith & Life Center in Nyack NY. Here we will be building brand new trail through an area jam packed with numerous big rocks and many fallen trees.
By the end of this 8th. weekend of crew outings, we are working in two sections. The first is the continuation of the main trail from last weekend (now refered to as the east side) The new “west” section is in a large and very loose rock field about 300 yards away. In the “east” section, we are getting close to the end point but we don’t want to go too close to the end until we have the rest of the trail completed. If we go all the way to the end that will entice hikers to come this way and until the trail is completed it will not be safe to hike. At the “west” end we have completed a small section of crib-wall, retaining wall and new treadway. Next comes the section in-between. A heavy rain was forcasted for Sunday so it was decided to cancel our crew outing. The conditions at this worksite are tough under ideal conditions adding rain would make it way too unsafe for us to work.
There is a whole lot of work to be done before this project is finished so we don’t expect to complete it until sometime next year.
As you can tell from the pictures this project will take a lot of effort and as always, it will be done by volunteers.
Speaking of volunteers, not everyone could make it every Friday, Saturday and Sunday and that’s OK with us. Some volunteers came out every day, others came out for one or two. Don’t feel that you have to commit to the entire project or even a weekend, join us whenever you can, any help is greatly appreciated and being a volunteer you can come and go as you see fit.
This project has everything, new volunteers will get to learn something about crew life and a lot about trail building, I know everyone will have a great time.
If this looks like the kind of activity you want to be part of, contact us, we're a community of volunteers who build, protect and maintain hiking trails.
