State of the Trail 2013 Dave Brewer
Wampum Trail Crew installs a trail marker on Cemex property. This is a picture of our trail crew out on a latewinter morning installing a blaze post along a field walk near the turn-of the last century lime kiln that the trail passes. The lime kiln was built by a local farmer in the early 1900’s and used to produce lime for, we think, agricultural and local light-industry purposes. Plenty of limestone and coal at hand. The kiln was last used in the 1930’s is what we’ve been told.
Wampum Chapter
www.northcountrytrail.org
Jennifer Simpson
PENNSYLVANIA - Our volunteers built a new half-mile segment of offroad trail in Beaver County, routing the trail away from a dangerous crossing of a four-lane highway and setting up the elimination of a section of road walk south of Darlington, Pennsylvania. Negotiations are ongoing with four landowners to build the new mile of trail in the woods in Beaver County in 2014. In Lawrence County, a new quarter mile of off-road trail is being negotiated for a section just east of the Beaver River. The chapter maintained a twice weekly trail maintaining schedule over the course of the year, doing our routine mowing and pruning chores to keep the trail in excellent hiking shape. Trail work sessions also involved improving the treadway on existing sections of the NCT within our range, refurbishing and repainting our wooden trailhead signs, adding trail signing at various locations to show distances to vistas and trailheads, participating in the Great American Cleanup with PennDot by removing trash and tires from along a mile of our road walk in Beaver County, and signing and identifying a trailhead parking area in the Cannelton area on Pennsylvania Game Commission property. We were also able to increase our impact on the NCT at McConnell’s Mill State Park, first by hosting a Student Conservation Crew from the Pittsburgh office for a weekend of trail maintenance in the spring, and secondly, by partnering with the Butler Chapter members and park staff in working on various treadway upgrade projects along the seven-mile length of trail in the Slippery Rock Gorge. The Chapter’s outreach was extensive in 2013 as volunteers manned the NCT booth and tables, “talked trail,” and recruited
new members at five different community events along our range. We led hikes for Darlington Days and the Butler Outdoor Club’s Outdoor Extravaganza, as well as conducting our own annual Pumpkin Pie Hike in October, which drew forty-five hikers from the community. The chapter has developed a plan for a regularly-scheduled monthly hike on the North Country Trail, details published on our website and shared through local media outlets to grow exposure of the trail within our communities. We worked on promoting the North Country Trail within our Trail Town of Wampum, first by installing three NCT kiosks in and around town and then by partnering with the Wampum Revitalization Committee in their preliminary efforts to develop a new riverside park, complete with amenities for NCT hikers. Talks with the officials of Darlington have led us to an agreement for that community to be our second official Trail Town. The chapter leadership is working with the community and the local historical society to find ways to leverage benefits of this arrangement to both the town and the NCTA. The chapter has been working on several signing initiatives, looking to add four to six new NCT 55-MPH highway signs at major road crossings all along our trail range. Materials have been sourced and priced and funding sources are being approached as we near the year’s end. Lastly, the volunteers from Wampum teamed up with our fellow Pennsylvania chapters to help conduct this year’s NCTA National Conference in Slippery Rock. We worked to coordinate transportation, we led hikes, and we provided labor and talent to support conference activities both on and off campus. It was a great opportunity to meet our North Country Trail counterparts from across the country. We want to thank all of our volunteers, landowners, and supporters for their contributions over the past year and say that we’re looking forward to another great year for the North Country Trail in Pennsylvania in 2014. —Dave Brewer
Wampum Chapter: Who wouldn’t show up for a Pumpkin Pie Hike? Forty-five hikers from the community did show up for this tasty event.
January-March 2014
The North Star 7