Rebuilding The Mt. Tammany Trail
By David H. Day © 2001 - All Rights Reserved
The Plan
In spring of 2000, the NY/NJ Trail Conference began work on a project in conjunction with Worthington State Park to rehabilitate the Mt. Tammany (Red Dot) trail. With its trailhead in the same Dunfield Creek parking lot as the AT, it was very easily accessible to even the most casual visitor. And over the years it has had many visitors. This trail has been a favorite of families, hikers and climbers; and over the years was literally being ‘loved to death’.
Over 20 years ago I first hiked this trail, and currently it is essentially the same route as it had always been. It is a very heavily used trail during the spring, summer and fall. Only about 2.5 miles long, it goes pretty much right up the ridge edge on the north side of the Delaware Water Gap. For part of the way up, it has wonderful views down into the Gap, of the river, Mt. Minsi, and the flats to the east of the ridge. While steep in places, the areas with the best views are quite attainable by most hikers.
When the Trail Conference’s NJ field representative approached Monica and I to head up this project, it was just a day or two after the New Year. We met with Larry Wheelock to discuss the scope and feasibility of what was proposed. Looking at photos and maps, we reviewed what the Worthington managers and Trail Conference had requested, and pondered and planned. It was going to take a great deal of time and concentrated effort to refurbish the trail and to reverse the damages of time and use. Agreeing to undertake the project, we scheduled a walking tour of the site to detail what would need to be done.
The first thing you saw of the trail was ‘the gully’. From the parking lot, there was a very steep hill, which rises about 70-80 feet to a wooded plateau. Over the years, people had ignored the trail’s correct route and simply climbed and slid down the embankment. Once that became a visible route, other people began to scramble up the same way. In the sandy soil of that hillside, this ad-hoc trail had become a nasty, rutted, open wound on the hill face; while at the same time, the real trail became abandoned and overgrown.
Above the gully, the trail rejoined and continued along its original route; crossing the plateau and edging up and onto the spine of the ridge. This entire section of the trail was in the same sandy clay soil, and wherever it sloped up or down hill it was eroding and washed out. In one area, the flooding from hurricane Floyd had created ditches over 2 feet deep where the trail had been! Further up, the problem was the opposite one. There, the bedrock of the ridge had been exposed up to 15 feet across as the trail grew wider and wider as hikers walked to the sides to avoid the ever-growing gullies.
Someone once said that the three most dominant concerns in trail design are "drainage, drainage and drainage". It would only take one look at this trail to see the truth in that statement. For thousands of years rain and snowmelt had found its way down those hillsides and over the ridge top, leaving things largely intact. When the water flows normally off of a hill it is spread over the entire hillside in what is called ‘sheeting’; and the roots and such keep things held together. But once a trail becomes ‘walked in’ enough to form even a small a depression in the soil, the water will collect in it. Since the natural tendency is for people to head more or less straight down the hill, the collection quickly becomes a stream as the water changes direction and also takes the same shortest path. Left to its own devices, the water will continue this trend, until you have a washed out ditch. Then the hikers move over to avoid it, and the process begins again, two feet to the side.
The first part of the project was to re-open the original trail alignment and to formalize the trailhead so people would be directed to use the real trail. This required ‘hardening’ the trail to make the treadway durable enough for the hundreds of people per day that use the trail in season. A major part of the hardening process included insuring proper management of water flow as the trail traversed around and up the end of the plateau. Once that was done, we would have to block off and remediate ‘the gully’, which would hopefully re-vegetate and heal over time. It was decided that this would be our Spring Project.
Measurements were taken, drawings were made, material lists were prepared and the schedule was set. Worthington’s Supervisor, Helen Maurella, undertook the acquisition of the purchased materials and supplies. Getting volunteers lined up to form the crew was begun by the Trail Conference, using direct mail, news articles and telephone calls. Amid dozens and dozens of emails and phone calls over the next few months, all the disparate aspects of the project began to come together; from a truckload of recycled railroad ties to a couple dozen volunteers.
The Spring
On the day the work was to begin, a grand group of men and women arrived. Most had never done trail work of any sort, but all were there to learn how and to do what they could. After a short course in trail construction concepts, tool usage and safety we took a walk through the work zone to look at what was to be done. With a strong illustration of why this needed to be done visible only 200 feet away in the form of ‘the gully’, they spread out along the trail in teams and prepared to work.
The first thing to be addressed was the re-opening and hardening of the official trailhead and pathway. This would mean 2 sections of cribbed retaining walls, built into a flight of terraced steps, a regular set of terrace steps, and a stretch of combined terraces and reinforced side hill contouring. This would get the people back onto the designated pathway, and up onto the plateau via a durable, correctly drained and user-friendly tread.
Monica went back and forth between the groups to instruct and show the people what needed to be done on the upper terraces and side hill part. I laid out the locations for the cribbed terraces, and showed the folks who were working on them what was intended. One of the people, Ron Snider, was in the construction business, and undertook to head up the cribbed timber staircase team. After a very short time, everybody was working away as if they had been doing it all their lives.
Most of what was required for the cribbed steps involved digging a trench into which the bottom layer of timbers were to be laid, drilled, and ‘nailed’ into the ground with 2 foot long steel reinforcing bars. Then the next layer is placed on top, staggered back by several feet, leveled off and dug into the hill as needed. In some places the rate of climb required more than one layer to result in a useable terrace / step area. This was then repeated over and over as the steps worked up the hillside. Each terrace would also need to be filled with rocks and dirt as it was completed.
On the upper section, Monica laid out the side hill and terrace areas, as well as a couple of cribbed steps, and dove into the work with the team up there. Since the soil was so easily eroded, it was necessary to do the same sort of process with the timbers, creating landings and reinforced edges for the side hill areas. Then the side hill contour could be cut into the hill to make a well-drained, durable and easily walkable treadway.
For the rest of the first day and for much of the following four work trips, work continued on these aspects of the project. I was kept very busy with cutting, notching and shaping the 50 or so timbers that we used. Between the cutting and constant sharpening of the chainsaw, it was hard just to keep up with them. The timbers we were using were reclaimed railroad ties, which are very durable but weigh 400 to 500 pounds. To get the 8’ long pieces up the trail required the efforts of 6 people using nylon slings. Even the smaller, 4’ pieces for the cribbing took multiple people and a great deal of effort to move to their destination. Railroad ties, steel rods, rocks and dirt all simple materials but the results look great and will hopefully last a very long time.
On the last trip of the spring season, we put the finishing details on our ‘grand staircase’ and began to fill in and block off the old herd path up the hill. By digging in and planting large rocks and piling logs and brush along the length of the gully, we hoped to slow the flow of water down the hill. By making the bottom and top of the ditch ‘ugly’ and difficult to pass through, we hoped to keep the hikers from continuing to use that path. We also blocked off the old path over to the ditch, the maintainer did the blazes, and the Parks personnel put up formal signs for the trailhead.
The Autumn