KV CHAPTER TRAIL MAINTENANCE YESTERDAY AND TODAY

Starting with its formation as an Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) chapter in 1946, the Keene Valley Chapter took on the responsibility for maintaining eight major trails in the vicinity of Keene Valley. Over time, however, interest waned and Chapter trails were "farmed out" to other ADK chapters or the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society (ATIS).Unfortunately, access to two of the eight trails has been lost due to problems with the private landowner. A complete list of former Chapter-maintained trails is at the end of this article.

Now. after many years of not doing any trail work to speak of, the Keene Valley Chapter has, within its membership, found a new eagerness for performing trail maintenance. For starters, the Chapter has "reclaimed" maintenance of the trails on Baxter Mt. with already two successful and well-attended work days on both the Beede Farm and Upham trails. The planned August 2022 work day to sidecut the upper portion of the Porter from the Airport Trail, which for various reasons didn’t happen will be rescheduled for early summer 2023.

In this day and age, the Chapter must operate under the Volunteer Stewardship Agreement that the main club has with the DEC for maintenance of trails on state land.  As an official "adopter", we are required to notify the forester (not the forest ranger) in charge of the particular land unit where the trail is located of any intended work to be done on the trail. Then, all volunteers are required to sign in on a DEC form the day of the work, and that form is sent to the forester. This provides workman's comp protection in the unlikely event of any injuries while doing this work. The notification is supposed to be two weeks in advance - supposedly to prevent any fraudulent claims that, for instance, a fall off a ladder at home would be submitted as a trail work claim.

While seemingly onerous, complying with the requirements outlined above is not all that difficult. Baxter Mountain, where we have worked the past two years, is part of the Hammond Pond Wild Forest and is overseen by Forester Corrie Magee. She has been easy to deal with and is excited that we have stepped up to maintain this trail. She has even produced an official DEC sign now placed (with permission from landowner Ann Hurd) at the end of Beede Lane along with some needed trail markers.

The Chapter's return to trail work started strong with a total of 14 volunteers showing up for our first work day in August, 2020. That day we cleared a considerable amount of accumulated blowdown on both the Beede Farm and Upham trails. Last year, June 2021 another good number showed up to add six drainage ditches to the Beede Farm Trail along with a blowdown sweep of both trails. A check later, after a morning of heavy rain, showed all ditches to be functioning with one more spot in need of a drainage ditch. The 2022 work day cleaned the established drainage, added one more ditch, and successfully dealt with another major bit of blowdown. Photo of “triumphant” crew on the summit of Baxter at the top of this page.

The planned effort on Porter will do some heavy clipping on the Porter from the Airport Trail. With the loss (hopefully temporary) of the trail from the Garden this trail has become an important alternative approach to Porter Mt. given the ready availability of parking at Marcy Field when compared to the congestion at the Cascade Mt. trailhead. A number of previous volunteers have indicated an interest in this project, and reportedly the new forest ranger, Andy Lewis, is also eager to see this trail restored.  The section in need is from Blueberry Mt. to the junction with the now-closed Porter from the Garden Trail.  (I will continue to try to find a way to gain DEC permission to build a new trail that bypasses the piece of private property that has caused the closure; but that is a long story for another time.)

Tony Goodwin - Trails