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Take a hike to raise money for Bear Mountain hiking trails - 29 August, 2008
Laura Incalcaterra
The Journal News
BEAR MOUNTAIN - Whether you hike or just support the idea of hiking trails, a new event will let you raise money to help maintain the hundreds of miles of pathways that course through Bear Mountain and Harriman state parks.
Many people believe the state maintains the trails, but the job is tackled by the volunteers who belong to the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference and its 100 member groups.
The state has neither the staff nor the cash to do the work alone, but it does maintain some portions of some trails.
Anyway, getting back to the fundraiser.
The People-For-Trails Hike-A-Thon will take place Oct. 4, beginning from the grassy area in front of the merry-go-round at Bear Mountain.
Organizers are trying to get 300 people to sign up, and asking each to secure $300 pledges in hopes of raising $90,000 to fix and repair trails.
The trail conference and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission have teamed up for the event, PIPC development specialist Tim Englert said.
The hike-a-thon is needed because attention must be paid to the trails, and it's going to take public participation to make that happen, he said.
In a way, Englert said, it's fitting that a hike-a-thon should help with that effort, considering the many fundraising walk-a-thons, marathons and other events that nonprofit groups have held over the years.
"It's payback time," Englert said. "If you never invested in your house, what's going to happen to it?"
Josh Howard, deputy executive director of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, said the organization had more than 1,000 members who actively volunteered to build new trails and repair and maintain existing ones.
But many members, including those who are able to do the physical labor required or who simply don't have the time, would also like to support the trail conference, he said.
The hike-a-thon is a way for those people to help, and to do so by participating in the activity that led them to support the organization in the first place.
"At the end of the day, it's all about getting outside and enjoying the outdoors," Howard said.
Hike-a-thon participants can choose from four trails, including an easy stroll that leads around Hessian Lake, then down to the Bear Mountain Zoo and back. The path is paved and friendly to families, senior citizens, parents pushing strollers, and people with physical disabilities.
The three remaining hikes get progressively more difficult, with the toughest one an 11-mile trek up and down Dunderberg Mountain - an effort that takes about eight hours and appears to require the skills of a billy goat, but rewards hikers with several stunning views of the Hudson River and surrounding Hudson Highlands.
"We try to cater to everybody," Howard said. "We don't want to exclude anybody."
Englert said the Appalachian Trail will mark its 85th anniversary in the fall. The original section of the trail is in Bear Mountain.
He said it was likely that some of the funds from the hike-a-thon would go toward a project that is rerouting one of the busiest sections of the trail right along Bear Mountain itself. The five-year project is now in its third year.
Englert added that field artist and painter Roger Baker had volunteered to mow a 300-by-500-foot grassy area at Bear Mountain to create the image of a family hiking along the Appalachian Trail.
Baker mowed the image of a Purple Heart into an Orange County park field last summer to honor the 75th anniversary of the medal that commends members of the military killed or wounded in action. His past works also include the Statue of Liberty and Elvis Presley.
The hike-a-thon will take place during the 2008 Oktoberfest, a popular annual event at Bear Mountain that features music, dancing and food.
On the same day, the annual Twin Forts Day celebration will be held. It features re-enactments and activities connected to the nearby Revolutionary War-era forts Clinton and Montgomery.
Participants have to register, and on hike-a-thon day each will receive a map detailing his or her route, mileage markers, and the location of aid stations and places where a hiker can pull out of the event if injured, sick or tired. Howard said volunteers with radios, first aid workers and others will be ready to assist hikers.
"We're doing this for a good cause," Howard said. "The money will be used to maintain and protect the hiking trails, and to create interpretive signs ... and to let people know there's a role for them to play in the maintenance of this resource."
Reach Laura Incalcaterra at lincalca@lohud.com or 845-578-2486
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