Cayuga Trails Club Annual Meeting & Luncheon
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Cayuga Trails Newsletter of the Cayuga Trails Club Founded in 1962 “…to explore, enjoy and preserve wild lands and places of natural beauty…” January-February 2018 Winter Edition Volume 58, Nos. 1&2 Cayuga Trails Club Annual Meeting & Luncheon Sunday, January 21st 2018 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM Ramada Inn, 2310 Triphammer Road, Ithaca Register by January 14th! The Annual meeting is upon us. A delicious meal, a fantastic presentation by David Barclay on how the amazing terrain and landscapes of our area were created, and a group of your friendly fellow hikers! Elections will also be conducted, so please also come to support those volunteers who work so hard to keep our club and trails shipshape. Slate of Candidates for Cayuga Trails Club Officers and Member-at-Large (to be considered for election at the 2018 Annual Meeting) President Gary Mallow Vice President David Priester Treasurer Jim Connors Secretary Robin Carlisle Peck Member-at-Large Polley McClure 1 FLT through hiker Roy Dando. photo by A Great Year By Gary Mallow Jim Connors. Your club had a great year in 2017. There is no question that the quality of hiking, and access to well-maintained hiking trails in our neck of the woods, both got better in 2017. I wish I could take credit for it. The truth is that credit for the accomplishments over the last year goes to some incredibly resourceful, committed, persistent – you might even say driven—people. Those people serve on your board; they work in allied organizations and state agencies that share our values. Most of all, credit goes to our volunteers. Highlight of the year was an unprecedented decision by the Finger Lakes Trail Conference, with support and logistical help from the Finger Lakes Land Trust, to invest $500,000 to purchase three land parcels that host the Finger Lakes Trail in Caroline and Danby. The folks at these two allied outdoor organizations worked hard to purchase land where the trail was vulnerable, a total of some 230 acres. The result is permanent protection of over a mile of Finger Lakes Trail that might otherwise have been closed and lost. Instead, the FLT will be protected and accessible for you to hike, ski, or snowshoe indefinitely into the future. If you needed a reason to support either of these wonderful organizations, you've got it now. Second on my list was my favorite day of 2017, National Trails Day. Trails Chair David Priester organized and supervised some 25 members who showed up with loppers, saws, paint, chainsaws and brush-cutters to reopen a long-closed two mile section of Finger Lakes Trail in the Town of Caroline. Lunch and T-shirts were on the club. Fun and very satisfying. A close third was the work of some 40 Trail Adopters, who put in hundreds of hours this year caring for our 100 miles of trail on the Finger Lakes Trail and Cayuga Trail. If we have well-maintained trails that are fun and challenging to hike, it's because of our Trail Adopters. They step up to do the physically challenging work of trail maintenance. I love those guys. Some of them are certified chainsaw sawyers who answered the call when reports came in of dead-fall across the trail. Although we didn't have anything like 2004, when hundreds of trees came down and we were at it for weeks, a sizable collection of down trees needed to be cut this year. Our sawyers were out there to do it. Hike Coordinator Barbara Nussbaum organized a diverse roster of over 70 hikes last year. There was a wide variety, from jaunts out to the Catskills for a full day and more than ten miles on the trail, to Sigrid Connors Thursday Hikes, to more modest urban hikes around town. We were out 36 times on Tuesday nights this year. We organized an active Labor Day camp-out to the Adirondacks. Reports were that it was fun, although a bit damp. The hikers drove, hiked, cooked, ate and camped together; they shared an adult beverage of an evening. We kept our section of Route 366 in Varna clean, part of New York's Adopt-A-Highway program. Volunteers showed up on four work days to keep the hamlet of Varna and a part of Cornell campus looking good, demonstrating your club's commitment to giving back to a progressive community that has been so generous to hikers and hiking trails. In 2017 we continued to collaborate with allied outdoor organizations. We donated $500 to NY Parks for construction of a bench celebrating the Black Diamond Trail. We worked closely with the staff at Cornell Botanic Gardens to plan improvements on the Cayuga Trail. We worked with the staff of the Finger Lakes National Forest to maintain and enhance the Interloken Trail, and renewed our working relationship with the foresters of DEC. We worked closely with the Finger Lakes Trail Conference and Finger Lakes Land Trust. We reached out to the Ithaca Hikers. Last, after months of thoughtful study, your Executive Board in December approved changes in our dues structure and the way in which we pay for publication of this newsletter. It's a strong statement from your board on its intent to remain financially responsible. Their purpose is to leverage our resources to work on behalf of hikers for many years to come. All things considered, your club had a great year. It bodes well for the future. I can't wait to see what next year brings! 2 Trails Report By David Priester, Vice President/Trails Chairman It is beginning to look like we might have a real winter this year (Hope I’m not speaking too soon) and for those of us who like winter hiking, skiing, and being out in the snow we are getting our insulated boots, snowshoes, microspikes and skis out of the basement. Not everyone likes to get out in the cold and snow, but lots of us do. Winter storms also can bring down trees and brush on our trail network, so please remember to report what you find per the instructions at the end of this article. In case anyone wonders, loppers and chain saws work in the winter too as do the trail maintainers. In the near future there will be a onetime temporary closure of the Finger Lakes Trail from the Rt. 34/96 trail head eastward to Town Line Road by the Finger Lakes Land Trust to enable deer population management under a special permit. Watch the trail notices for the exact dates for closing and reopening this section. This is in the Lick Brook area on map M-17. Thank you everyone for respecting the trails closed for hunting season. It is a very important part of our relationships with permitting land owners that their requests for hunting restrictions are complied with. During the winter I will be going over the list of trail adopters and checking with all of you to be sure you are still wanting to continue in your very essential role. Occasionally someone is unable to continue leaving a section open for adoption. Now and then folks speak to me about becoming a trail adopter and truthfully if it’s out on a hike or where I can’t write it down I may not remember. So if you are not currently a trail adopter and are interested in considering this please send me an email so I can contact you and keep you on my list for upcoming openings. A lot of attention has been paid to improving the signs and trail markings particularly at road crossings along the trails in the CTC region in the last year. If you notice deficiencies as you all hike the trails please let me know. Also, when you come across the yellow 12‖ x 12‖ FLT signs check the address listed. Now and then you may find a sign which has the old Rochester FLTC address instead of Mt. Morris. If you find one of these let me know where it is and I will replace it. Still on the horizon there are a number of projects coming up in the spring. The FLT will be rerouted through the recently acquired property straddling White Church Road in Caroline which will involve some bridging and puncheon work as well as the usual brush clearing and foot path definition. Three bridges are in the works, one near Curtis Road, one on the Abbott Loop, and one near the Chestnut Lean-To. There are some modest projects planned for spring time on the Cayuga trail, doing some drainage work and filling in some boggy areas. And there are two proposed Alley Cat projects planned in or near our region. One is the rebuilding of the Kimmie lean-to just east of Robinson Hollow Road. The other is a significant trail construction project in the Durfee Hill/Eastman Hill area. You might want to consider volunteering for one of these projects. And as I always ask, as you hike on our trails, be it in the CTC region or elsewhere, I urge you to take note of trail maintenance issues that you see as needing attention. Winter hiking, when you can’t really see a foot path in the ground, is a good test of the blazing on the trail. The trail adopters and the management team cannot be out there on the many miles of trail every day like you are so we really depend on hikers’ reports to keep aware of what is happening and what needs attention.