30 Spring 2018 LOCALadk Magazine
LOCALadk
On an overcast Saturday morning in May 2017, I join 30 people
at Wilmington's Hardy Road trailhead. Josh Wilson, the executive
director of the Barkeater Trails Alliance (BETA), demonstrates how
to carr y a McLeod, a rake with a two-sided blade: by hand, at your
side, sharp end pointed at the dirt. Ever yone grabs tools, and Wilson
leads our group of volunteer trail builders into the forest.
We hike along established singletrack, then leave the trail to
follow pink sur veyor's tape tied to tree limbs. BETA , a Lake Placid
nonprofit founded in 2011, builds and maintains trails for mountain
biking and ski touring in the High Peaks region of the Adirondack
State Park. The organization joined grassroots trail builders in
Wilmington; those combined efforts have added more than 20 miles
of mountain bike trails to the Wilmington Wild Forest since 2005.
Today's project? One mile more.
Our group halts where the bright flags lead across a drainage and
a rock garden. Here, we'll construct a 40 -foot "turnpike" to trans-
form jumbled terrain into stable ground. We dig in, using grub hoes,
McLeods, pick maddocks, and fire rakes to clear duff, the ground
layer of forest debris. And the community- driven effort to create
mountain bike trails in the Adirondacks rolls for ward.
Singletrack?
It takes a village
By Olivia dwyer
