by Jim Foster, KTA Board of Directors, Secretary
In 2015, I learned that the Appalachian Trail (AT) section near Lehigh Gap needed a club to maintain it. I immediately thought that KTA would be a good candidate. After all, we’re the Keystone State’s leading proponent for hiking and trails, and we maintain hundreds of miles of trails all over the state. However, we hadn’t been directly involved with the AT for several decades.
There was a huge “but” to our involvement with the AT. Our maintainer volunteers were fully committed to their existing responsibilities, and we’d need to recruit a new corps of volunteers before committing to this new task. We developed plans to recruit new volunteers in the greater Allentown area.
The Lehigh Gap Nature Center (LGNC) was and continues to be our best partner in this endeavor. The LGNC property encompasses the middle of our AT section; it’s also the only Superfund site in the country to be restored as an environmental education center. We approached LGNC Executive Director Dan Kunkle to see whether the center would be willing to help out. Boy, did it ever! LGNC agreed to host 2 recruitment hikes to solicit new volunteers. To get the word out, Dan gave us the names of LGNC’s press contacts in the Lehigh Valley. Our efforts were a huge success, with about 70 people coming out for the hikes. As we developed the core leadership team for this venture, LGNC allowed us to meet at the center several times.
Perhaps the best example of LGNC’s support was when we were looking for a place to store tools near our new AT section. I asked Dan whether we could share a corner of the shed LGNC uses for its tools. Dan had a better idea—he said we were welcome to store our stuff in a mostly unused LGNC building, and he even gave us our own set of keys. Thanks to our partner LGNC, we now have a group of about 30 volunteers maintaining our new AT section, plus some side trails.
KTA simply couldn’t ask for a better partner than the LGNC. If you’d like to learn more about the LGNC’s great environmental and conservation work, go to its website at www.lgnc.org.
