Category Archives: Volunteering

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.

2022 Annual Meeting

We will be holding our annual meeting virtually this year. It will be held Tuesday April 5, 6:30-7:30pm. If you would like to attend the Microsoft Teams meeting, please email pinehillpartnership@gmail.com with Annual Dinner in the subject line.

We will give a brief overview of the coming year’s project plans along with a short business meeting.

Would you like to join our board of directors? Do you have some time and energy to give back?? Think about joining our board of directors. Let us know via email at pinehillpartnership@gmail.com.

Fall wild times in pine hill park

By Tom Estill

During the first week of fall, you could find trees turning their beautiful fall foliage colors and many birds, including robins, red-eyed vireos, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, Eastern towhee, yellow-throated vireo, white-throated sparrow, wood ducks, Canada geese, great blue heron and myrtle warbler migrating south through the forest. On Sept. 25th, these migrating birds, along with year round residents such as tufted titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch, black-capped chickadees, blue jay, hairy woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, pileated woodpecker, and Cooper’s hawk were all seen on that same day. Asters were still flowering and American chestnut burs, from the lone known wild American chestnut known in the park, and acorns were falling onto the forest floor. Because American chestnut trees need two different trees to

produce viable seeds, those seeds found in the burs were small infertile seeds. Chipmunks and gray squirrels were scurrying about. While walking along middle Giorgetti trail, I heard a massive pine tree crash to the ground on lower Giorgetti trail, shaking the ground beneath my feet. On closer inspection, I could see the core of the tree was rotten. This late into Sept. you could still see a common sulfur butterfly flying about.

By the second week of October, fallen leaves were covering most of the trails of the park, and acorns covered the ground in huge numbers. It was going to be a good MAST year indeed. In my opinion, shared by many, fall foliage season was a bust this year. Colors just were not as colorful and vibrant as years past. Squirrels and gray squirrels were busy collecting the fallen acorns.

During a walk on Oct. 9th, crows were seen in large numbers, as is common this time of year, but the only other place I saw birds was around Muddy Pond.The birds I saw there were Canada geese, wood ducks, hairy and pileated woodpecker, blue jay, white-breasted nuthatch and golden-crowned kinglet.

During a walk on Oct. 19th, I noticed the forest floor covered with a thick layer of leaves, and just a very few acorns still falling. I did not hear or see a single bird, which is a rarity for me. That disappointment was offset by having a magnificent doe slowly walk across the Carriage Trail right in front of me. I was sitting on a log tying my boots at the time and it just didn’t see me. Gray squirrels and chipmunks still gathering acorns.

On Oct. 23rd, I went on an early morning birdwalk and once again saw not a single bird, except crows flying overhead. Leaves were still falling with many trees still having lots of attached leaves. Through my binoculars I could see that the oak trees were pretty much finished dropping their acorns. Still no good, hard frost in the area.

On the first day of Nov. on an evening walk, once again the only birds seen were crows flying overhead and a few hundred geese resting at Muddy Pond. Most of the leaves were gone from the tops of most trees with the exception of oak and beech trees. Chipmunks and gray squirrels

still out collecting acorns. And at the end of my walk, as I’m checking myself for ticks, sure enough, there’s two ticks crawling on my pant legs. Temps. were forecast to be in the 20s later in the week, bringing an end to the ticks until next spring.

A few days later I’m out on an early evening walk and saw white-breasted nuthatches,

black-capped chickadees, northern flicker, a large flock of robins migrating through the forest, crows, downy woodpecker, tufted titmouse, red-bellied woodpecker, Canada geese at Muddy Pond, and many chipmunks and gray squirrels.

On Nov. 7th, I was lucky enough to see bluebirds near the trailhead, along with blue jays, black-capped chickadees, tufted titmouse, and white-breasted nuthatches.

On Nov. 11th, I noticed something I had never seen before at Rocky Pond. The water was

tinted green with algae. Even in the middle of summer, when pond temperatures are high, I had never seen the ponds turn as green in color as I saw on this day. But the big news I received on this day from Shelley Lutz was that the beaver dam on Muddy Pond had collapsed the day before! As I’m headed towards the dam on the Carriage Trail, I could hear the roar of water

from a couple hundred yards away. Sure enough, about 15 ft. of the dam center had collapsed. Water in the pond was already very low. It looked like it had drained about 5 ft. There were a few deep spots on the pond still covered with water being used as a resting place for a few hundred migrating Canadian geese.

On a late afternoon hike on Nov. 22nd, the only bird I saw was a white-breasted nuthatch. No chipmunks were seen, but a few gray squirrels were busy collecting acorns. Rocky pond still had a green tint to it. No migrating birds were seen at either pond.

During the first week of December, both ponds had finally frozen over with the exception of a few areas on the perimeters, only a few gray squirrels were seen, and though temperatures were cold, there was little snow and ice on the forest floor.

On a mid-Dec. day, during a late afternoon walk, no birds or mammals were seen, recent rains and warming had melted all recent snow and ice on the forest floor, a few areas of open water could be seen at both ponds, and the peripheral ice at Rocky Pond was thin, breaking very easily.

That’s it for this issue. Please stay on the trails and enjoy your time at the park.

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 Day

Thank you every one who came Saturday to the community work day. It was a huge success in moving some rocks, cleaning drainage’s and moving bark mulch for the Master Gardner’s.

Saturday, April 24th, 9AM to noon. We will do a little bit of work in the front entrance to help Master Gardner’s out. Our primary goal will be to stage rocks on Milk Run for a French Drain and banked corner for a future volunteer group. Rock collecting will be all size rocks using buckets for softball size and smaller. Rock slings with pry bars for larger rocks. We will also being working on cleaning drainage’s out. Meet at Giorgetti parking lot. We have tools, bring water, bug dope, sunscreen and gloves. Thanks and hope to see you there.

VIRTUAL annual meeting—march 29

We are hoping you can attend a virtual Pine Hill Partnership annual meeting on Monday, March 29th at 7pm via Go to Meeting.

We will have a short discussion to show our accomplishments for 2020 and plans for 2021. We will also be reviewing our 2020 and 2021 budgets and will elect a slate of officers and board members.

Only folks with current memberships will be eligible to vote, but anyone is welcome to attend the meeting. If you are unsure of your membership status, please contact Shelley at shelley.lutz@gmail.com or 775-4867 before 8pm.

Please RSVP by Friday, March 26th if you can attend. We will email you login instructions on the afternoon of the 29th.

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We hope to see you there and send a big thank you for your support this year in our continued efforts to make these area trails so special.

Sincerely,
Andrew Shinn, Joel Blumental, Dave Jenne, Claus Bartenstein, Peggy Shinn, Nate Netsch, Lindsey Johnston and Shelley Lutz—Board of Directors

PHP AWARDED Loyal to our soil grant

We are proud recipients of the Loyal to Our Soil Grant sponsored by Ranch Camp, MTBVT, and Specialized Bikes. Last summer Ranch Camp held two raffles for Loyal to Our Soil Grant. Specialized donated two bikes for the raffle, tickets were $100 each. Also, Ranch Camp donated, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of every bike sold in 2020 toward the grant.

We are one of 5 groups to receive this grant. This will help us pay for a VT Youth Conservation Corp group to build Maximum Capacity, our next trail construction project.

A big thank you to Ranch Camp, Specialized Bikes, and MTBVT! #ranchcampvt #specializedbikes #mtbvt

Why we leave leaves

Why we do not remove leaves there are several reasons. One we move all hard earned dirt by hand in 5 gallon buckets and leaf blowers blow all that dirt off the trail tread. Second the ground up leaves will actually help hold our dirt on the trails and protects the trail tread. Plus freeze/thaw cycles the leaves help hold our trail tread in place and not get sucked up on boots or tires.

We are not blessed like other local trail systems that have an abundance of dirt. Pine Hill Park is not one of those areas.

We know leaves are slippery especially when wet but with the traffic the park is seeing currently the leaves will get ground up quickly.

Thank you for understanding.

Here is a great video on why we leave leaves.

Milk run is open!

As of late Monday September 7th, our newest trail, Milk Run, is fully open!!

Our newest trail, Milk Run (pink line), is now open!

We started building this trail with YES plan from Rutland High School and Youth Works volunteers in 2018. That first year we completed about 1300′ of trail with 400 volunteers and 1600 volunteer hours. In 2019 we completed about 1000 feet of trail with 1225 volunteer hours, 286 volunteers. 2020 the year of corona and no major volunteer groups like YES plan or Youth Works we accomplished quite a bit.

The trail is just under 3900 feet (.74 mile) long. FYI, the longest trail in the park is Stegosaurus at 4100 feet.

The Vermont Youth Conservation Corp (VYCC) came in with 4 crew members for 2 weeks and we completed just under 1500′ of trail. With VYCC removing organic material and our three Pine Hill Partnership volunteers doing finish work behind them it was a perfect combination utilizing the work force. We completed just under 1500′ trail in a little over 500 hours. We did have an extra hand two days that really helped with getting a couple of small banked corners built along with finish work. Having a trained work crew was instrumental on getting this trail done.

VYCC is a paid trail crew. We are still soliciting donations and contributions to help defray the cost.

A time lapse of work on Milk Run during a hot, humid August day makes it look way easier than IRL!.

The trail still will need a touch of refinement next year (hopefully our big volunteer groups are back). We expect to build two banked corners on the new section.

5 pry bars to move ‘Deborah’. VYCC was naming the rocks.

Keith came down and helped for two days.
Follow the yellow brick road
It poured for about 30 minutes one day.