Rehab in Sky Meadows State Park
By Daniel and Ellen Feer
Sky Meadows is a beautiful park. If you haven’t visited, you should add it to your list. The AT runs through it along the ridge, but there are miles of other trails that lead to interesting places. The Ambassador Whitehouse is one of those trails. In 2016 the crew built a set of stairs using 7 rather large stones and it has been a favorite of the crew ever since. Now almost 10 years later, our crew member, Steve Phillips maintains this trail and he asked us to stop by to look at a section of the trail just down the hill from those stairs.
The mineral soil on this section of trail is pretty close to the surface but when water runs straight down it erosion still happens. Rolling grade dips and a relocation were needed. Kathryn Roddy, the Trails Coordinator at the park, walked the trail with us (Steve and Barbara Phillips, Ellen and Dan Feer, Robert Fina, Jon and Katherine Rindt and Tysha Robinson) and made sure our plan was approved before we started work.
Several design points need to be kept in mind when relocating a trail like the slope of the hill, where the new section starts and ends, and is there a pretty anchor at the switchback. Ambassador Whitehouse delivered. We relocated the trail so the switchback was right at a large pile of rocks. Hikers have probably been curious about them for years but never had a way to get there.
The weekend of the work trip gave us great weather and Steve and Barb hosted at their lovely home. Saturday morning we had breakfast and hit the trail. We walked down the stairs previously built and got started. Leading up to the relocation we cut several grade dips to manage the water, but on the new section of trail we were able to lay it out with grade reversals (a subtler version of a grade dip) to keep the water moving across the trail, not down it.
By late Sunday morning, it was clear we would finish the relocation, so we started doing our favorite thing, rubbling in the old trail. Leaves go down first to break the speed of rain drops and help prevent the spread of invasive plants, then rocks and logs. In the end, hikers just started walking down the new trail before it was open, and I’m sure some of them didn’t even notice.
A couple days later, Kathryn Roddy sent us a note with this lovely quote: “I hiked up to check out the reroute on the Ambassador Whitehouse Trail this morning. It is B-E-A-utiful! Thank you for contributing to the safety, enjoyment, and sustainability of the trails at Sky Meadows — I am both personally and professionally grateful.” You're welcome!
This month, the Cadillac crew was Janet Arici, Martha Becton, Edlyn Becton, Nina Blagrove, Karen Brown, Alice DeCarlo, Maria De La Torra, Kirsten Elowsky, Dan and Ellen Feer, Robert Fina, Chris and Erica Glembocki, Bill Greenan, Peter Haupt, Marty Martin, Steve Phillips, Jon and Katherine Rindt, Tysha Robinson, Ellen Shaw and Patrick Tyler. We love new members. We train and we are very safety aware. If you always wanted to learn how to swing a sledge hammer or if you already know all you want to about rehabilitating a trail but would like to do it with us, please drop us a note at ccrewpatc@gmail.com.