October 1, 2021
Getting Back on the Trail

While there haven't been many hikes in the last few months we have had a lot of activities.

On May 16th we had maintenance and blaze painting on the trail. Trail magic was held on June 24th and 25th. We had our usual hot dogs and array of salads and goodies. Bo Koltnow from WFMZ came out to do a story on our Trail Magic and also went out to Bake Oven Knob to check it out before the graffiti cleanup.

The big Bake Oven Knob Graffiti cleanup took place on June 26". Spearheaded by Game Commission Land Manager Bill Carr and Tim Quick from the Haycock Bouldering Coalition, the cleanup was a collaboration between the Game Commission, Haycock Boulder Coalition, Allentown Hiking Club, the Flametamers Wildlands Fire Crew, Lehigh County Task Force 99, the Lehigh Valley Spartans and Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club. Elephant Snot, a grafitti removal solution was applied to the painted rocks. After letting it sit on the rocks and "do its thing," it was washed off by the fire crew. AHC served hot dogs and other donated snacks and drinks to the volunteers. Ash Bailot from the Morning Call was there to document the effort for the paper.

A smaller 2" cleanup was held in August to remove some newly painted graffiti. The fire crews weren't at this cleanup so backpack water sprayers were used to wash off the elephant snot. We will be back at the church meeting in person starting in November. We are going to use a hybrid Zoom/In Person format tomake the meeting more accessible to everyone. We purchased a microphone to allow the people on Zoom to be able to hear all the discussion in the room. There is a bit of a learning curve with process and I hope to have it functioning well at the next meeting.

Coming up we have more Maintenance Hikes, Corridor Monitoring and our favorite annual holiday hikes. I hope to see everyone!at the December Pot Luck!