Overlook trail between Intersection 30 (Dewey/PA4J) and Intersection 37 (Shimmer/Stego/Overlook view) will be closed all day Friday (9/30) and Saturday (10/1). We are doing repair work to re-tension the bridge and replace several soft stringers. Please don’t go under the ropes otherwise you’ll be walking through the swamp that now has water in it.
Thank you.
Category Archives: Trail Work
Maximum Capacity, It’s Grand and It’s OPEN!
On Sunday, August 21 we opened the last new trail to be built in Pine Hill Park and we definitely saved the best for last. We celebrated with a little ribbon cutting, some refreshments, and a chance to say hello to long-time members as well as those just discovering the park.
Prior to the official snip of the ribbon long time Pine Hill Partnership leader and project coordinator Shelley Lutz shared a few thoughts:
“Thank you, Rutland Recreation, for having the trust in Pine Hill Partnership to build and maintain trails in the park. This started around 2003 with Cindi Wight and Michael Smith, who had a vision of the asset that Pine Hill Park could be for the city, then Ejay Bishop agreeing with this vision. Now it’s Kim Peters and Tyler Dahlin. The Rec Department’s trust has been instrumental in getting the park to where it is today. Thank you all.
Next round of big thank you’ s go to Tim Vile, who designed the bridges in the park, and more recently Nate Netsch, Leonard Bartenstein and Keith Wight who will still come down to help us out on major projects.
Pine Hill Partnership board of directors: Andy & Peggy Shinn, Joel Blumenthal, Claus Bartenstein, Lindsey Johnston, Nate Netsch, Dave Jenne.
A huge thank you to Josh Harris and Rosey for volunteering their time, energy and mini-excavator to build the jump line on Maximum Capacity. This started out as me casually mentioning to Josh one day there was a mini bowl area we discovered when Keith and I walked this trail 5 or 6 years ago. Josh immediately said I’ll donate my time and mini and get Rosey to help build a jump line. Thank you Josh and Rosey for all your time well spent.
VT Youth Conservation Corp has had a big hand in building trails in Pine Hill Park along with Rutland High School YES plan, Killington Mountain School and Youth Works. YES plan and KMS programs will be back in 2023 and Proctor High School will be doing an outdoor education class 2 days/week this fall learning how to maintain trails.
Claudia Sachs was a crew leader for our crew this past summer that built Maximum Capacity.
Funding for Maximum Capacity has been by contributions from folks who use the park. Plus a Recreational Trail Program grant that Nikki Adams a former Rec employee helped write. Thank you Kim Peters for letting Nikki assist in writing this grant. “
The work done by the VYCC crew was hard, dirty and wet a few days but luckily they did not lose any days to poor weather. Even the mosquitoes didn’t carry them away! The spongy moths were buggers the first week but even they slowed down thankfully.
Maximum Capacity is 2486′ long. When combined with Broken Handlebar, Jigsaw, Milk Run, Furlough and Exit Strategy it will be 12,215 (2.3 miles) foot long mostly downhill run.
Pine Hill Partnership applied for a Recreational Trail Program (RTP) grant which we received to pay for this 3 week crew. Thank you to Rutland Rec for their help in writing the grant and the maintenance crew for their support in mowing VYCC camping site and equipment we can borrow when needed.
Hope to see you in the park trying out Maximum Capacity soon!
Maximum Capacity
July 20th Update: Maximum Capacity is complete and still closed. VYCC crew #5 did a great job in building this trail. They came in not knowing what they were getting into fully and came out seasoned trail builders understanding how to build a complete trail from scratch.
We will have a grand opening for this trail. We’re just not sure when. Stay tuned to social media and our webpage for updates.
The crew built 5 huge banked corners, two French drains under two of our banked corners. We built rock ride overs to protect tree roots or help to raise the trail tread in low places. Moved TONS of rocks literally. We taught them finish work how to build rolling grade dips complete with out-slope or in-slope a trail for drainage.
This rock weighed probably 800-1000 lbs. We dug it out and replaced it into a banked corner.
The crew members are from all over the US, college students needing a summer job.
The work was hard, dirty and wet a few days but luckily we did not lose any days to poor weather. Even the mosquitoes didn’t carry us away. The spongy moths were buggers the first week in the caterpillar stage even they slowed down thankfully.
Maximum Capacity is 2486′ long. When combined with Broken Handlebar, Jigsaw, Milk Run, Furlough and Exit Strategy it will be 12,215 (2.3 miles) foot long mostly downhill run.
Pine Hill Partnership applied for a Recreational Trail Program (RTP) grant which we received to pay for this 3 week crew. Thank you to Rutland Rec for their help in writing the grant and the maintenance crew for their support in mowing VYCC camping site and equipment we can borrow when needed.
June 27th Update: VYCC has been here for one week and will be here until July 8th working on Maximum Capacity and hopefully Bone Spur. They are camping at the Community Center feeding all the mosquitoes.
Anyone who likes to make cookies or brownies VYCC would be grateful recipients.
The trail is CLOSED until it is completed and the trail tread has time to set up.
Folks have been hearing about Maximum Capacity for over a year now. The trail is coming to life with Killington Mountain School back in May and currently with YES Plan (Rutland High School students) in early June. The students have done a great job in removing organic material. We will continue to work on this trail with YES Plan and VT Youth Conservation Corp to hopefully have it open by the end of July. The trail is approximately 2500′ long.
If you have flexible hours and would like to help with finish work let us know. This is where we do all the raking to create a sustainable trail tread. Send pinehillpartnership@gmail.com an email for more details. We do have a lot of trail broken open that needs finish work so many hands make light work.
Park is OPEN
Saturday, June 4th: Jigsaw is now open.
Sunday, May 21st: Park is open today with Jigsaw being closed and roped off. There are still some tender places in the park so be gentle riding please. Thank you.
6PM UPDATE: Friday, May 20th. Park will remained closed for Saturday. We will reassess later Saturday afternoon to see if trails have dried up to open for Sunday. We still have standing water on a lot of trails. Please stay off the trails it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Volunteers will be checking the trails late Friday (5/20) afternoon to see if they have dried up. We had another .2″ of rain on Thursday evening. We are hoping the trees leafing out and a little bit of wind this afternoon things will dry out for the weekend. Stay tuned. Thank you.
We have had to temporarily close the park due to the amount of rain last Saturday, Monday and Tuesday. We have standing water on a lot of our trails. The water needs to drain out before we reopen for all users.
Thank you for respecting our temporary trail closures.
Water on Strong Angel, Jigsaw and Sore Elbow, Tuesday, May 17th.
KMS Students
Thank you to Killington Mountain School for a solid morning of removing organic material on Maximum Capacity. The students, coaches and administrators broke open about 900 feet of trail in 2 hours. This is 900 feet less than the VT Youth Conservation Corp will have to do in late June. Thank you KMS!
Rutland High School YES Plan is back in early June. We will continue to work on Maximum Capacity.
It is fantastic to have these work groups back in the park.
Help the Park, Enter Our Survey
Pine Hill Park needs your help!
Pine Hill Park is conducting an Economic Development & Marketing Research Survey to better understand the actions and habits of our visitors and park members. We hope to learn more about the activities and opportunities that attract individuals to visit Pine Hill Park, financial patterns associated with visits, as well as how to better reach our visitors and park members.
This survey will take between 5-10 minutes to complete. Please take your time and answer each question as accurately as possible.
Please limit one response per household.
Thank You!
Community Work Day
We will be holding a community work day Saturday, April 30th from 9-12pm. Meet at the front entrance of Pine Hill Park.
We have lots of small projects we would like to tackle, which include helping the Master Gardener’s in the front entrance, to hiking the trails with tools to clean out drainage’s.
Community Work day
CANCELLED
CANCELLED due to snow on the ground. We will reschedule when weather permits us to moving lumber.
Sunday, November 28th at 9AM meet at Evergreen Gate. We will be moving lumber in from the Pond Rd to Vista overlook for a new bench. Lumber is all pre-cut and ready to go just need some extra hands to move it in. Thank you. Hope to see you there.
Community work night
Wednesday, August 4th, 5:30pm. Meet in the parking lot at Giorgetti. We will be weed whacking the Carriage Trail on the Rutland side. We could use your help. Bring a weed-whacker, if you don’t have one we will have a few for folks to borrow. Bring bug dope, wear gloves and bring a head lamp.
RTP GRant Awarded
We are proud recipients of a Recreation Trail Program grant (RTP) through the VT Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation who administers the grant. Out of 23 applicants we were one of nine chosen to receive an $18,000 grant. This will pay for a 3 week VT Youth Conservation Corp crew in 2022. This crew will work on Maximum Capacity and Bone Spur which are both located near or off Milk Run.
We would like to thank Kim Peters and Nikki Adams at Rutland Rec for helping the write the grant. Joel Blumenthal and Nicole Kesselring were instrumental in helping with the maps and Act 250 questions that we had to answer. Without everyone’s help our grant would not have been a success.
With some luck, YES plan from Rutland High School will return in the spring of 2022 to help with our fantastic trail system.
