Mount Jo Long Trail rebuilt with sustainable trail design

LAKE PLACID | The Adirondack Moutain Club (ADK) celebrated a new trail in true Adirondack fashion: by going for a hike. About 38 ADK professional trail crew and more than 100 volunteers have been working to restore Mount Jo Long Trail since 2020. On Oct. 14 they celebrated the new and improved trail with a ribbon cutting performed with flagging tape and a lopper, followed by a hike on the trail. More than 50 ADK members, trail crew, volunteers and local legislators attended. "ADK's primary purpose was to increase access to the newly formed Adirondack Park through trail work and education," ADK Deputy Executive Director Julia Goren said. "Mt. Jo has been a part of our story for a very long time and in a very important way. It symbolizes that commitment to access and opportunity, as a short hike with incredible high peak views." Mount Jo serves more than 18,000 visitors annually. This took a toll on the trail over the years. ADK used sustainable trail design so that it can continue to be a favorite hike for visitors and locals. "We know full well that much of the park's 2,200 miles of hiking trails are degrading," Goren said. "To overcome this, we need to bring sustainable trail design into remote backcountry areas. The new Mount Joe trail provides a model for how we can fulfill this need." Goren said sustainable trails keep hikers safer and save time and resources in the long run. The project received funding for the project from the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST) Local Enhancement and Advancement Fund (LEAF). This fund comes from occupancy tax and is used for experiences that benefit residents and visitors of the Adirondacks. "We use that money to enhance our communities and this is just one of many examples," Mary Jane Lawrence, Chief Operating Officer of ROOST, said. "It is so that people who live here can come to enjoy these trails, make them more sustainable, and also to make it a better experience for those that are coming to visit our area." The new Mount Jo Long Trail is rerouted so it is slightly longer, but is still a little more than a mile. Two things that make sustainable trails sustainable are adaptive management and annual maintenance. "When we're talking about sustainable design it's really important to think about that process afterward," Benjamin Brosseau, ADK director of communications, said. "How are we maintaining and monitoring those trails? And how are we adaptively managing them so that when changes in use take place or changes in the environment and the landscape take place? How are we responding to that?" Another aspect trail builders think about is the visitor experience. When Trails Manager Charlotte Staats is out with her crew, she asks them to imagine they are on a backpacking trip, completely exhausted and to consider, "What kind of surface will you be hiking?" and "What will you want to be utilizing?" She explained that facilitating the kind of trail visitors are comfortable hiking on will keep them on the trail. For example, the trail has sections of bedrock, which Staats said is good for hiking because it's hard and doesn't erode from footsteps. However, this leads some hikers to use fragile vegetation on the edges of the trails to pull themselves up, which widens the trail. To combat this, the trail crew put in a two-food-wide ladder on the steeper bedrock. Brosseau said some other things hikers can do to help maintain the trail are to walk through the mud, so the trail doesn't widen; and choose hikes based on the season, for the same reason. "If you're going to hike during shoulder season, be prepared for ice and things like that," he said. "Because what also happens is people think 'That's icy, I don't want to hike over that.'" Brosseau said ADK has been working on updating resources, like hike tracking apps, to be accurate to the new trail and asking hikers to stay on the new route to help maintain a healthy, safe and sustainable trail for years to come.

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Mount Jo Long Trail rebuilt with sustainable trail design

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