ALBANY, N.Y. -- Most of the trails in the popular Storm King State Park that
were closed to hikers three years ago when unexploded artillery shells were
discovered will reopen this weekend.
Brush fires in 1999 from the area near West Point resulted in the discovery of
unexploded shells from decades of artillery practice at the U.S. Military
Academy. Now, most of the shells have been removed. The state park in Orange
County has 8 miles of rugged trails overlooking the Hudson River and has long
been popular with hikers from upstate New York as well as New Jersey and from
New York City an hour away.
All trails at the park have been cleared of artillery on trails at least a
foot deep and on 25 feet of both sides of the trail, said Edward Goodell,
executive director of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, which
maintains the paths.
About 75 percent of the trails will be open this weekend, said Wendy Gibson,
spokeswoman for the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic
Preservation.
A portion near West Point could still have a few unexploded shells away from
the trails and will remain closed, he said. The shells can't explode by being
stepped on, Goodell said, but would probably only explode after intense heat
as in the brush fires.
Hikers "should stay on hiking trails and should not, under any
circumstances, bushwhack off the trail," said Neil Woodworth of the
Adirondack Mountain Club which worked to reopen the park.
"It sounds scary to have unexploded shells," Goodell said, "but
there has never been an incident."
The shells were fired at the Crow's Nest, a mountain on the border between the
military reservation and the park, when the Army used it for a target between
the 1880s and the 1960s.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cleared the 1,900-acre park of shells, Gibson
said.