Hemlock Trail Reroute is Complete

After 6 years of being half closed due to heavy erosion and storm damage the Hemlock trail fully re-opened Friday evening, June 24th as a loop trail. A nearly $12,000 Knowles-Nelson grant matched by the Friends of Wildcat Mountain State Park, great work by the trail contractor Willie Bittner of Great Lake Trailbuilders, and many volunteer hours made this possible. In addition to creating several hundred feet of new trail route to avoid future erosion many areas of the existing route were improved. Most noticeable are the new steps at the base of the trail. Previously heavily eroded log steps made the start of the route very tough. Willie set new stone steps by hand to make the start of the trail a real joy.

The Friends assisted with removal of the old material along the trail route and perhaps most importantly have invested more than 100 hours to date transplanting native vegetation from over 650 linear feet of the new route into the old route. We are keeping it alive by ferrying water in using firefighting backpack sprayers. It’s been successful so far and we ask you to please stay on the new trail route to protect the transplants. Thanks to Dan, Liz, Marla, Scott and Steve for the help!