The Adirondack Mountain Club North Jersey-Ramapo Chapter is one of 27 chapters of the ADK. The mission statement of ADK, which will be celebrating its centennial in 2022, states in part: “ADK works to protect …. wild lands and waters by promoting responsible outdoor recreation and building a ….. constituency of land stewardship advocates.” The North Jersey-Ramapo
Dr. Lucy Rockefeller Waletzky will be honored at the Trail Conference’s Centennial Gala. On Saturday, October 16, the Trail Conference will be holding our Centennial Gala at the Bear Mountain Inn. To mark this milestone, we will be honoring Dr. Lucy Rockefeller Waletzky—philanthropist, environmentalist, and longtime Trail Conference champion. Dr. Waletzky is Chair of the New York
The Trail Conference Conservation Corps (TCCC) creates leaders in environmental conservation while empowering people to play a deeper role in the care of their local parks and trails. By training these AmeriCorps service members to teach the public, we amplify our impact in fostering a commitment to protecting nature. This season, eight crews are working to improve
The Cedar Brook Trail in Taconic State Park is shady, woodsy, and follows the Cedar Brook, which makes for the perfect hike for a summer day. Because of the trail’s prime location, there were parts of the trail that had become incredibly eroded to the point of being dangerous for trail users. The Bash Bish Trail Crew, led
Over the past quarter-century of leading hikers and trail runners through the woods, I’ve come to realize that both user groups share much more in common than I had ever realized. This became apparent when I noticed large numbers of my Saturday trail runners showing up on Sunday hikes, on their active recovery days. And
We love meeting new people on the trail. And we loved getting to show off the hard work of our volunteers and Corps members on a hike with U.S. Senator Cory Booker! On Saturday, the United States Senator from New Jersey met up with Trail Conference Executive Director Josh Howard, Chief Financial Officer Mary Perro, and
Jersey Off Road Bicycle Association (JORBA) and the Trail Conference collaborated on an important bridge project in the Wildcat Ridge Wildlife Management Area in Morris County, N.J., with great results. Planning for this project began pre-COVID, and its completion this summer is another step on the road to normalcy in the eyes of our trail builders. JORBA’s Norm
Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park in New York’s Putnam County has long been a favorite destination with over 60 miles of blazed trails, many of them quiet and uncrowded. The park, like many others, has seen an enormous increase in trail usage during the pandemic. Fortunately, several projects have been underway to improve trails and park
A new, multi-use trail system that supports healthy communities and ecotourism in the greater Lake Hopatcong region is becoming reality, thanks to private-public partnerships and a belief in the power of connecting people with nature. The Lake Hopatcong Regional Trails Plan envisions a recreational trails system covering Jefferson Township and Mount Arlington Borough in Morris
Some say that the job of designing, building, and maintaining sustainable trails involves managing two things—people and water—and that the two are usually related. For instance, minimum impact recreation principles tell us to avoid using wet trails to prevent displacing saturated soils and hastening erosion. On the other side of the coin from user behavior,
Volunteer leaders Bob Jonas and Estelle Anderson care just as passionately about their fellow volunteers as they do trails. In Morristown National Historical Park in Morris County, N.J., the duo has created a roving trail crew dubbed the Clipping Brigade. The crew tackles the park’s trails most in need of care at any given time. Estelle shares the secret to their success: “A good portion
If a time machine could take us back to the early years of the Trail Conference, what would we change? Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and organizations, like people, learn and grow from the past. But has the heart of the Trail Conference mission changed? Our organization has remained a constant presence over the last
