ADIRONDACK TRAILS

Page 2
ADK FIELD PROGRAMS
Another successful season of trail
building and summit stewarding has passed. As
you will see in the following pages, hundreds of
people contributed to the enormous amount of
work that was accomplished.
For the trails program, many of the
projects focused on repairing damage from
tropical storm Irene. The hardest hit were the
foot bridges. ADK trail crews replaced eight foot
bridges in 2012, the shortest one measuring
twenty two feet and the longest at fifty five feet.
All of the bridges were located in the
backcountry and were built (or rebuilt in some
cases) using non-motorized hand tools.
The summit stewards enjoyed many sun
drenched days in the alpine zone last summer.
The uncharacteristically hospitable weather,
coupled with a motivated crew of stewards,
resulted in some major improvements to the
summit trails along with an unprecedented
amount of public outreach. In fact, this year a
new record was set. 20,567 hiker contacts were
made over the five month long season. This is
over a sixty percent increase from ten years ago
in 2002.
Looking ahead to the 2013 season, there
are some exciting trail projects planned. The list
is ambitious and hopefully there will be similar
weather conditions as 2012. One of the highlights
will be installing a portion of the Northville-
Placid Trail reroute at the southern end.
Approximately three miles of the trail will be
taken off of the Benson Road near Northville
and instead will take hikers through the Silver
Lake Wilderness. Several foot bridges will need
to be constructed to complete this reroute.
Hopefully, in 2014, the rest of the southern
reroute through the Shaker Mountain Wild
Forest as outlined in the Unit Management Plan
can be completed which would alleviate hikers
from walking on the road for ten plus miles
between Northville and the Benson Road.
Another exciting trail project will take
place between Algonquin and Iroquois
Mountains in the High Peaks Region. For those
of you that have recently walked this herd path
you know how deteriorated the tread is and how
difficult it is to navigate without getting your
boots soaked. With generous funding from the
Adirondack Forty-Sixers www.adk46er.org/ , an
anonymous donation for materials, and the
Department of Environmental Conservation
(DEC) flying-in material, the Professional Trail
Crew will be able to spend four weeks installing
foot bridges in the worst sections of resource
damage.
TO CONTACT US:
ADK FIELD PROGRAMS
PO Box 867
Lake Placid, NY 12946
Phone: 518-523-3480 ext. 18
Fax: 518-523-3518
Wes Lampman, North Country Operations
Director - fieldprograms@adk.org
Julia Goren, Summit Steward Coordinator
summit@adk.org
Andrew Hamlin, Trails Coordinator
trails@adk.org
Frank Krueger, Trails Committee Chair
fkkmek@frontiernet.net
Herb Coles, Trail Steward Program Coordinator
June.herb@verizon.net
Hilary Moynihan, Adopt-a-Lean-To Prgm.
Coordinator - adkleanto@gmail.com
www.adk.org
Photo Credits: Page 1-Evan Curtis, Alena Giesche,
Dove Henry, Siri Larson, Rebecca VanDerWende
Page 2-Rebecca VanDerWende
Page 3-Evan Curtis